{"id":43777,"date":"2025-09-13T23:52:17","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T15:52:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/scientists-its-do-or-die-time-for-americas-primacy-exploring-the-solar-system\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T23:52:17","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T15:52:17","slug":"scientists-its-do-or-die-time-for-americas-primacy-exploring-the-solar-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/scientists-its-do-or-die-time-for-americas-primacy-exploring-the-solar-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists: It\u2019s do or die time for America\u2019s primacy exploring the Solar System"},"content":{"rendered":"

Federal funding is about to run out for 19 active space missions studying Earth\u2019s climate, exploring the Solar System, and probing mysteries of the Universe.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s budget expires at the end of this month, and Congress must act before October 1 to avert a government shutdown. If Congress passes a budget before then, it will most likely be in the form of a continuing resolution, an extension of this year\u2019s funding levels into the first few weeks or months of fiscal year 2026.<\/p>\n

The White House\u2019s budget request for fiscal year 2026 calls for a 25 percent cut to NASA\u2019s overall budget, and a nearly 50 percent reduction in funding for the agency\u2019s Science Mission Directorate. These cuts would cut off money for at least 41 missions, including 19 already in space and many more far along in development.<\/p>\n

Normally, a president\u2019s budget request isn\u2019t the final say on matters. Lawmakers in the House and Senate have written their own budget bills in the last several months. There are differences between each appropriations bill, but they broadly reject most of the Trump administration\u2019s proposed cuts.<\/p>\n

Still, this hasn\u2019t quelled the anxieties of anyone with a professional or layman\u2019s interest in space science. The 19 active robotic missions chosen for cancellation are operating beyond their original design lifetime. However, in many cases, they are in pursuit of scientific data that no other mission has a chance of collecting for decades or longer.<\/p>\n

A \u201ctragic capitulation\u201d<\/h2>\n

Some of the mission names are recognizable to anyone with a passing interest in NASA\u2019s work. They include the agency\u2019s two Orbiting Carbon Observatory missions monitoring data signatures related to climate change, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, which survived a budget scare last year, and two of NASA\u2019s three active satellites orbiting Mars.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s New Horizons, a spacecraft that made front-page headlines in 2015 when it beamed home the first up-close pictures of Pluto. Another mission on the chopping block is Juno, the world\u2019s only spacecraft currently at Jupiter.<\/p>\n

Both spacecraft have more to offer, according to the scientists leading the missions.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew Horizons is perfectly healthy,\u201d said Alan Stern, the mission\u2019s principal investigator at Southwest Research Institute (SWRI). \u201cEverything on the spacecraft is working. All the spacecraft subsystems are performing perfectly, as close to perfectly as one could ever hope. And all the instruments are, too. The spacecraft has the fuel and power to run into the late 2040s or maybe 2050.\u201d<\/p>\n

New Horizons is a decade and more than 2.5 billion miles (4.1 billion kilometers) beyond Pluto. The probe flew by a frozen object named Arrokoth on New Year\u2019s Day 2019, returning images of the most distant world ever explored by a spacecraft. Since then, the mission has continued its speedy departure from the Solar System and could become the third spacecraft to return data from interstellar space.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Alan Stern, leader of NASA\u2019s New Horizons mission, speaks during the Tencent WE Summit at Beijing Exhibition Theater on November 6, 2016, in China.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n Visual China Group via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

New Horizons cost taxpayers $780 million from the start of development through the end of its primary mission after exploring Pluto. The project received $9.7 million from NASA to cover operations costs in 2024, the most recent year with full budget data.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unlikely New Horizons will be able to make another close flyby of an object like it did with Pluto and Arrokoth. But the science results keep rolling in. Just last year, scientists announced the news that New Horizons found the Kuiper Belt\u2014a vast outer zone of hundreds of thousands of small, icy worlds beyond the orbit of Neptune\u2014might extend much farther out than previously thought.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re waiting for government, in the form of Congress, the administration, to come up with a funding bill for FY26, which will tell us if our mission is on the chopping block or not,\u201d Stern said. \u201cThe administration\u2019s proposal is to cancel essentially every extended mission \u2026 So, we\u2019re not being singled out, but we would get caught in that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stern, who served as head of NASA\u2019s science division in 2007 and 2008, said the surest way to prevent the White House\u2019s cuts is for Congress to pass a budget with specific instructions for the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe administration ultimately will make some decision based on what Congress does,\u201d Stern said. \u201cIf Congress passes a continuing resolution, then that opens a whole lot of other possibilities where the administration could do something without express direction from Congress. We\u2019re just going to have to see where we end up at the end of September and then in the fall.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stern said shutting down so many of NASA\u2019s science missions would be a \u201ctragic capitulation of US leadership\u201d and \u201cfiscally irresponsible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re pretty undeniably the frontrunner, and have been for decades, in space sciences,\u201d Stern said. \u201cThere\u2019s much more money in overruns than there is in what it costs to run these missions\u2014I mean, dramatically. And yet, by cutting overruns, you don\u2019t affect our leadership position. Turning off spacecraft would put us in third or fourth place, depending on who you talk to, behind the Chinese and the Europeans at least, and maybe behind others.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stern resigned his job as NASA\u2019s science chief in 2008 after taking a similar stance arguing against cuts to healthy projects and research grants to cover overruns in other programs, according to a report in Science Magazine.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

An unforeseen contribution from Juno<\/h2>\n

Juno, meanwhile, has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016, collecting information on the giant planet\u2019s internal structure, magnetic field, and atmosphere.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything is functional,\u201d said Scott Bolton, the lead scientist on Juno, also from SWRI. \u201cThere\u2019s been some degradation, things that we saw many years ago, but those haven\u2019t changed. Actually, some of them improved, to be honest.\u201d<\/p>\n

The only caveat with Juno is some radiation damage to its camera, called JunoCam. Juno orbits Jupiter once every 33 days, and the trajectory brings the spacecraft through intense radiation belts trapped by the planet\u2019s powerful magnetic field. Juno\u2019s primary mission ended in 2021, and it\u2019s now operating in an extended mission approved through the end of this month. The additional time exposed to harsh radiation is, not surprisingly, corrupting JunoCam\u2019s images.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

NASA\u2019s Juno mission observed the glow from a bolt of lightning in this view from December 30, 2020, of a vortex near Jupiter\u2019s north pole. Citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill processed the image from raw data from the JunoCam instrument aboard the spacecraft.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/SwRI\/MSSS Image processing by Kevin M. Gill \u00a9 CC BY<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

In an interview with Ars, Bolton suggested the radiation issue creates another opportunity for NASA to learn from the Juno mission. Ground teams are attempting to repair the JunoCam imager through annealing, a self-healing process that involves heating the instrument\u2019s electronics and then allowing them to cool. Engineers sparingly tried annealing hardware space, so Juno\u2019s experience could be instructive for future missions.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven satellites at Earth experience this [radiation damage], but there\u2019s very little done or known about it,\u201d Bolton said. \u201cIn fact, what we\u2019re learning with Juno has benefits for Earth satellites, both commercial and national security.\u201d<\/p>\n

Juno\u2019s passages through Jupiter\u2019s harsh radiation belts provide a real-world laboratory to experiment with annealing in space. \u201cWe can\u2019t really produce the natural radiation environment at Earth or Jupiter in a lab,\u201d Bolton said.<\/p>\n

Lessons learned from Juno could soon be applied to NASA\u2019s next probe traveling to Jupiter. Europa Clipper launched last year and is on course to enter orbit around Jupiter in 2030, when it will begin regular low-altitude flybys of the planet\u2019s icy moon Europa. Before Clipper\u2019s launch, engineers discovered a flaw that could make the spacecraft\u2019s transistors more susceptible to radiation damage. NASA managers decided to proceed with the mission because they determined the damage could be repaired at Jupiter with annealing.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, we have rationale to hopefully continue Juno because of science, national security, and it sort of fits in the goals of exploration as well, because you have high radiation even in these translunar orbits [heading to the Moon],\u201d Bolton said. \u201cLearning about how to deal with that and how to build spacecraft better to survive that, and how to repair them, is really an interesting twist that we came by on accident, but nevertheless, turns out to be really important.\u201d<\/p>\n

It cost $28.4 million to operate Juno in 2024, compared to NASA\u2019s $1.13 billion investment to build, launch, and fly the spacecraft to Jupiter.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

On May 19, 2010, technicians oversee the installation of the large radiation vault onto NASA\u2019s Juno spacecraft propulsion module. This protects the spacecraft\u2019s vital flight and science computers from the harsh radiation at Jupiter.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n Lockheed Martin<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re hoping everything\u2019s going to keep going,\u201d Bolton said. \u201cWe put in a proposal for three years. The science is potentially very good. \u2026 But it\u2019s sort of unknown. We just are waiting to hear and waiting for direction from NASA, and we\u2019re watching all of the budget scenarios, just like everybody else, in the news.\u201d<\/p>\n

NASA headquarters earlier this year asked Stern and Bolton, along with teams leading other science missions coming under the ax, for an outline of what it would take and what it would cost to \u201cclose out\u201d their projects. \u201cWe sent something that was that was a sketch of what it might look like,\u201d Bolton said.<\/p>\n

A \u201ccloseout\u201d would be irreversible for at least some of the 19 missions at risk of termination.<\/p>\n

\u201cTermination doesn\u2019t just mean shutting down the contract and sending everybody away, but it\u2019s also turning the spacecraft off,\u201d Stern said. \u201cAnd when you turn off those spacecraft\u2019s radio receivers, there\u2019s no way to turn them back on because they\u2019re off. They can never get a command in.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, if we change our mind, we\u2019ve had another election, or had some congressional action, anything like that, it\u2019s really terminating the spacecraft, and there\u2019s no going back.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Federal funding is about to run out for 19 active space missions studying Earth\u2019s climate, exploring the Solar System, and probing mysteries of the Universe. This year\u2019s budget expires at the end of this month, and Congress must act before October 1 to avert a government shutdown. If Congress passes a budget before then, it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43777"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}