A NASA proposal to spread the cost overruns for the James Webb Space Telescope among all of its divisions is going over like a lead balloon among at least some researchers, who are concerned that sharing the telescope’s costs will imperil funding for their projects, according to Nature.
Among these scientists are a group of 14 prominent planetary researchers, who signed on to an editorial on Thursday rejecting the NASA cost-sharing plan. “Resources of other NASA programs … are now threatened to cover current and future JWST costs,” according to the editorial.
Originally designed to be the successor to the aging but popular Hubble Space Telescope, the JWST is scheduled to launch in 2018. The cost of meeting that deadline is expected to be more than $8 billion, or at least $1.5 billion more than what had been forecast by an independent panel in 2010.
The House had cut all funding for the telescope from NASA’s FY2012 budget proposal. The telescope, operations for which will be based in Maryland, may have a better chance in the Senate, though, where Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., chairs the Senate Appropriations subcommittee in charge of NASA’s budget.
The scientists’ complaints about the cost-sharing plan could be a sign that the proposal isn’t going over well with the Office of Management and Budget, which would have to approve it, sources tell Nature.
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