New Horizons Heliospheric Science
The following post is taken from here
Is a Sea Change Coming for New Horizons Heliospheric Science?
If you visit the New Horizons mission website frequently, you’ll notice that the spacecraft continues to generate excellent science as it plows its way through the Kuiper Belt. It recently woke up from its latest hibernation period in good health and is transmitting data it gathered back to Earth. The spacecraft, in addition to studying the Jupiter system in 2007, the Pluto system in 2015, and the Kuiper Belt Object Arrokoth in early 2019, has been doing some other fascinating solar system science since then thanks to two mission extensions in 2016 and 2023. Now, as a result of budget cuts at NASA, an important part of the NH science mission could end as early as October of this year.
Carolyn Collins Petersen
Apparently the budget is so tight that they cant pay to download the data from the spacecraft so its stuck there at the edge of the known solar system. Thats handy.
To be clear, it's not a matter of any fight between NASA divisions; it's more that budget cuts mean the mission simply won't have the money to staff mission control and run the heliospheric instruments to gather data. According to Fran Bagenal, New Horizons team member and planetary scientist, the team really needs to keep the helio science going. "It's worth it," she said. "I understand the concern that Helio has at NASA. They've got other instruments that are making measurements around the Earth and the L1 point measuring the solar wind and space weather, and they're short of money."
Someone start a go fund me.
#enoughsaid