2010 Senior Review for Operating Missions – NASA Science | science.nasa.gov Results of the most recent Senior Review of NASA’s operating missions. Link to a PDF with comments on each mission at the bottom of the page. Their rank ordering, from highest to lowest: Plank, Chandra, Warm Spitzer, Swift, Newton, WMAP, Suzaku, GALEX, RXTE, INTEGRAL, Warm WISE. (via Adam Kraus)
UPDATE: There’s a nice article and summary table at Nature News (via John Gizis).
Senior Review: So Planck gets a longer mission. GALEX, RXTE, and INTEGRAL get their funding cut. Warm WISE gets rejected harshly (no extended source catalog — sad.) Chandra certainly came out well, with only a recommendation to end the GTO program, and automate more.
MarshallMay 7, 2010 @ 18:38
Warm Spitzer certainly did very well, though!
No surprises that Chandra was approved – it really is the only game in town for high angular resolution X-ray, and as the committee rightly said won’t be replaced for decades.
Note that GALEX actually gets two more years before the funding ends. And INTEGRAL is 95% European, so I strongly suspect that the committee expects the mission to keep going as a pure-European affair.
Mr SquidMay 8, 2010 @ 11:54
Warm Spitzer said the magic word: exoplanets. They successfully sold themselves as a major exoplanet observatory.
Senior Review: So Planck gets a longer mission. GALEX, RXTE, and INTEGRAL get their funding cut. Warm WISE gets rejected harshly (no extended source catalog — sad.) Chandra certainly came out well, with only a recommendation to end the GTO program, and automate more.
Warm Spitzer certainly did very well, though!
No surprises that Chandra was approved – it really is the only game in town for high angular resolution X-ray, and as the committee rightly said won’t be replaced for decades.
Note that GALEX actually gets two more years before the funding ends. And INTEGRAL is 95% European, so I strongly suspect that the committee expects the mission to keep going as a pure-European affair.
Warm Spitzer said the magic word: exoplanets. They successfully sold themselves as a major exoplanet observatory.