14 DAY TRIAL // United States President Barack Obama released his proposal on the budget for fiscal year 2015, and the document does not bring good news for the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), an airborne telescope developed by the US and Germany.
Interestingly, the budget proposal comes just 11 days after SOFIA reached full operations, after years spent in construction. The project is supported by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (German Aerospace Center, DLR.
SOFIA consists of a powerful 2.5-meter (8.2-foot) reflecting infrared telescope mounted in the tail section of a heavily-modified Boeing 747SP wide-body aircraft, which can fly at altitudes of up to 12 kilometers (41,000 feet).
Initially, the observatory was supposed to go airborne 3 or 4 times per week. However, under the new White House proposal, its funding would be slashed from $84 million to $12 million (€61 million to €8.7 million), which would essentially mean the telescope is grounded less than two weeks after completion.
The only solution apparent at this point for preventing this shutdown is for the DLR and other German partners to contribute with significantly more money than originally agreed upon. At this point, NASA is responsible for covering 80 percent of the costs associated with operating SOFIA. Thus far, the DLR has invested around $1.25 billion (€900 million) in this project.
Even though SOFIA began conducting scientific flights as early as 2010, it was only two weeks ago that it reached full capabilities and received its last complement of instruments. “It’s just starting to produce science in a big way. It would be a very bad time to make any reductions,” says Erick Young.
The expert is the science mission operations director for SOFIA. The airplane is currently based at the NASA Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility, in California, and its staff is largely based at the NASA Ames Research Center, in Mountain View, California.
According to the budget proposal, one possible reason for reducing the funds allotted to SOFIA would be the extension of the Cassini mission around Saturn, which has received continued support since achieving orbital insertion around the gas giant, on July 1, 2004. Many experts at NASA want to see the mission extended until at least 2017, if not beyond 2020.
Ultimately, it will be Congress that decides the final budgets for all federal agencies, including NASA. Obama's proposal will undoubtedly be considered carefully, but at this point it is still too early to say whether or not Congress will agree with the White House proposal, Nature News reports.