For the past 25 years, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)Flagship of Chandra X-ray Observatory They recorded X-ray emissions from the exploding star. Supermassive black holegalaxy clusters, and other exotic high-energy regions of the universe, enabling scientists around the world to unravel the structure and history of the universe.
As part of a telescope Anniversary celebration This week, the space agency offered a behind-the-scenes look at the work that goes into keeping the $1.5 billion spacecraft flying. spaceand many of its employees – engineers, technicians, analysts and designers – have been part of this mission since its inception decades ago.
of Chandra The telescope first National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Planning began in 1976, with fundraising and preparatory work beginning a year later. The effort was led by the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Massachusetts, which also currently manages the telescope’s day-to-day operations. Space Shuttle Columbia It was launched in 1999 and put into an orbit one-third the distance to Earth. MoonChandra’s vantage point has helped astronomers study mysteries that were unknown to exist when it was built. Exoplanets and Dark Energy.
“How much technology from 1999 is still in use today?” Chandra scientist Douglas Schwartz said in a recent NASA announcement. statement“We don’t have the same camera equipment, computers or phones as back then, but one technological triumph – Chandra – is still going strong and powerful enough to read a stop sign from 12 miles away.”
The mission, originally planned for five years but then extended to at least 10, still has 10 years of life left. That lasting value is no coincidence, according to the mission team, who automated parts of the observatory to increase efficiency. After Chandra’s budget was cut in 1992, the mission was dramatically restructured to eliminate scheduled maintenance and upgrades by astronauts, minimizing the impact on the science output. “There were plenty of excitements and challenges, but we rose to them and overcame them,” project engineer David Hood, who joined Chandra development in 1988, said in a statement.
“High power X-ray field astronomy “Chandra was still relatively young, so it wasn’t enough to just build an innovative observatory,” Martin Weiskopf, who has led Chandra’s scientific development since the late 1970s, said in a statement. “We first needed to build the tools needed to test, analyze, and improve the hardware.”
Marshall renovated and expanded its X-ray calibration facility in Alabama to house Chandra’s instruments and test key hardware in a space-like environment, an effort that paved the way for Chandra’s testing a few years later. James Webb Space TelescopeDesigned as a successor to Hubble Space Telescope.
The mission team is currently closely monitoring the telescope’s orbital position and the efficiency of its key instruments, including its external insulation, which is understandably deteriorating. time Due to the harsh space environment, telescopes cannot keep staring in the same direction for long periods of time. Telescope operation has become more complicated, Scientists claim Observation efficiency remains high, just as it was at the start of the mission.
“Chandra is still a workhorse, but it requires more gentle handling.” Marshall Space Flight Centerhe said in a statement.
The iconic telescope’s 25th anniversary is bittersweet for many astronomers. They worry that the telescope will be prematurely closed because of budgetary crunch, which saw NASA’s proposed fiscal year 2025 budget released in March cut funding for Chandra by 40 percent, from $68.3 million in 2023 to $41.1 million next year, with further cuts after 2026, dropping to $5.2 million in 2029. The loss of the Chandra telescope is an “extinction-level” event for X-ray astronomy in the United States, and no other telescope can mimic or exceed Chandra’s capabilities. More than 100 astronomers continue to urge NASA to reconsider the decision through the Save Chandra coalition, arguing that the observatory’s operating costs have been stable for the past few decades and that it still has another decade to run.
Yesterday (July 23rd), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) A committee looking at ways to reduce Chandra’s operating costs concluded that there was no way to continue operating the observatory with the reduced funding proposed by NASA, SpaceNews reported. reportThe committee also outlined three options for continuing to operate Chandra at a reduced capacity, such as limiting its observing program to those that have synergies with other telescopes, but all three possibilities would require a higher budget than NASA proposed.
NASA is currently evaluating these options and expects to announce its plans for the Chandra transition in mid-September.
