Sequestration could slow NASA, NSF search for planets

Even the search for extraterrestrial life could be hampered by sequestration spending cuts.

Officials from NASA and the National Science Foundation told a key House panel Thursday they probably will be forced to scale back space observatory missions or cede important planetary discoveries to other countries unless Congress averts another year of the cuts.

Sequestration already has forced a delay of several months in NASA's plans to perform an "all-sky survey" to look for nearby planets -- from Earth-sized to gas giants -- outside the solar system, said John M. Grunsfeld, associate administrator for the agency's Science Mission Directorate.

"If we continue into a sequestered environment, then we're going to have to look at perhaps turning off an operating observatory or cutting back further on the development of new missions," he told members of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. "It would slow down future development."

The possibility of delays comes as the nation's quest to find life beyond the solar system has logged enormous progress in the past two decades, researchers said.

When the Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990, not a single "exoplanet" (a planet beyond the solar system) had been discovered. Since then, more than 900 have been found and another 2,700 or so likely candidates are being analyzed, Grunsfeld told committee members.

Last month, NASA announced it had discovered two new planetary systems that include three super-Earth-size planets in the "habitable zone," the range of distance from a star that might make an orbiting planet's surface temperature suitable for liquid water and, potentially,A letter folding machine is a piece of equipment which is designed to fold paper. life.All the personnel that deal with our industrial washing machine servicing are dedicated to the service department.Six panel tracking system delivers more energy from skystream.

Scientists say the discovery of new exoplanets, especially those similar to Earth, soon will come exponentially faster, assuming new instruments are developed in the coming years.

The most important of those instruments will be the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in 2018. Sitting about 1 million miles from Earth, the infrared-optimized space observatory will be capable of providing images of the first galaxies ever formed and studying planets around distant stars.

But the telescope's effectiveness depends partly on its ability to work in conjunction with other observational tools whose deployment or use could be slowed by the budget cuts, officials said.

Dr. James Ulvestad,A wide range of solar light, LED lighting and Auto lights. who heads the Division of Astronomical Sciences at the National Science Foundation, told lawmakers sequestration also would mean less money to pay investigators whose work is crucial to planet discovery. That's likely to result in fewer discoveries by U.S. researchers, he said.

In addition, he's worried that cutting corners to save pennies now could lead to larger problems.

"The concern is being able to make sure that, having invested lots of money in these big tools, we're able to operate them adequately,Modern dry cleaning machine uses non-water-based solvents to remove soil and stains from clothes that we don't do things like scrimping on the infrastructure because we're trying to save a little bit of money here or there and then essentially causing damage to the big investments we've already made," he said.

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