This afternoon the Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee is scheduled to mark up its appropriations legislation, which will include funding for NASA. One particular area of interest will be what the subcommittee does to fund the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) after its House counterparts included no funding for the program in its version of the bill in July. The Senate subcommittee is chaired by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), who criticized the House move not to fund JWST; Maryland is the home of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and the Space Telescope Science Institute, two key facilities associated with the development and eventual operation of the telescope.
House appropriators said their decision not to fund JWST (in a bill yet to be taken up by the full House) was prompted by the considerable cost overruns and schedule delays on the project as cost estimates for the program exceed $8 billion. While some astronomers seek to restore that funding, others, particularly in the planetary sciences and solar physics, worry that saving JWST might come at the cost of other missions. That’s something I covered in detail in an article in this week’s issue of The Space Review.
Despite concerns that JWST might be canceled, there’s evidence that by the time the final FY 2012 budget is approved (likely well after the fiscal year starts on October 1), JWST will end up with some money. Mikulski is a supporter of the telescope, as noted above, and we’ll see later today how much her subcommittee is willing to provide to the telescope. Also, as I noted in The Space Review article, even House members who voted for the appropriations bill that denied funding for JWST believe it will be funded. “I’m confident it’s going to be restored,” Rep. John Culberson (R-TX), who serves on the House CJS appropriations subcommittee, said of JWST on Friday, calling his committee’s move “a shot across the bow” to get NASA to provide updated and more accurate cost estimates for the program. He added, though, that funding JWST can’t come at the expense of other NASA science missions, particularly planetary exploration.
When is anyone associated with this thing going off the rails going to get the axe (as it were)? There should be consequences for this level of mis-management. Civil service rules be damned.
Weiler should have been fired in 2006 for his role in Griffin’s Contempt of Congress on the George Brown Jr. instructions.
Griffin had ATK as his “Khrush” then. (Great Russian word – literally “roof”)
The JWST ground segtment will be in Mikulski’s district.
How bad is it at NASA? No one was “relieved” for Columbia.
It’s no wonder Lisa Novak lost it. Anyone would have.
When is anyone associated with this thing going off the rails going to get the axe (as it were)?
Agreed. The focus has been on a drastic cutoff of funding, not what is needed to restructure the program.
Fair sentiments about establishing blame and wielding hatchets. What’s coming out of the JWST replan is sort of a “don’t worry, we’ve got it all fixed”. JWST has budgetarily gone off the rails several times in the last decade, so one has to wonder why we should believe them now.
I have to suspect that the problem is less blameable on personal incompetence, and more on NASA standard project management rules applied to missions that are extremely large. There is some management mismatch going on. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that you fix anything by just chopping heads off. Program restructuring seems the only credible route, though it isn’t clear anyone really knows how to do it.
The Senate CJS subcommittee dispatched their markup responsibility in about 20 minutes. JWST is in their bill, not surprisingly. It’s not an unfunded mandate either. The Senate number for NASA is $17.9B, $1.1B higher than the House. Much closer to the President’s budget. So JWST is easily reinserted, and other plus-ups are made as well, compared to the House bill.
Of course, life was made easy by their relatively generous 302(b) allotment. Mikulski didn’t need to sell her soul or sacrifice others to put JWST in.
So assuming this survives full committee tomorrow, the fate of JWST will be determined in conference.
This turkey is headed for Uncle Sam’s Thanksgiving table to be carved, cut up and devoured by the budgeteers.