The Spitzer Space Telescope is in Trouble

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, one of the agency's four "Great Observatories," may be closing its doors forever, if funding can't be scrounged up to go the project's way.

In April, a NASA advisory panel recommended that the space agency halt all Spitzer-related projects unless the cost of maintaining the telescope - $16.5 million a year - could somehow be reduced. Now, NASA has revealed that, as of May 16, no funding has been identified to support continuing Spitzer operations past 2015.

"The Spitzer project clearly recognizes that the NASA Astrophysics budget is under severe pressure and that the Senior Review Panel (SRP) faced an extremely difficult task," Spitzer representatives said in a response. However, they went on to say that that they still believe that the observatory offers unique ways to tackle scientific investigation with a long record of yielding superior mission results.

A response to the SRP from NASA, informed the community that the Spitzer Space Telescope would "seamlessly continue operations" if the program could augment its budget to significantly reduce operations costs - a plan that would then be considered in during the FY 2016 budget formation process.

According to Spitzer, the observatory has done just that, reducing operations costs to $13-15 Million, supplemented with an additional $2-4.2 million a year "from direct community support."

This reduction in costs would be completed by cutting the length of operations - a painful but necessary process that the telescope has seen before. In 2009, the telescope halted the last of its observations of infrared wavelengths stretched by the expansion of the universe - operations that required chilled liquid hydrogen, a costly commodity. These days, the telescope does "warm" operations, viewing near-infrared wavelengths and extrasolar planets.

Even following this cut, the telescope is very important to the scientific community, Lisa Storrie-Lombardi, manager of the Spitzer Science Center, told The Christian Science Monitor.

According to Lombardi, "the number of hours requested versus the number of hours available has been the highest it's ever been in the mission," resulting in seven to one ratios for requests verses available hours.

Cutting available hours even more will create a larger larger backlog of telescope requests, but may be worth it to keep the Spitzer doors open a little longer.