WASHINGTON
-- NASA announced June 15 that a senior review board found no
"insurmountable technical or programmatic challenges" to the
completion of the SOFIA flying astronomy observatory, but pointedly noted that
the U.S. space agency has not decided whether to stick with the over-budget and
behind-schedule program or cancel it.
The
Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), a 747 jetliner
equipped with a German-built infrared telescope, has been on the chopping block
since the beginning of the year. NASA shocked the astronomy community and
annoyed its German partners when it sent Congress a budget request in February
that included no money for SOFIA. NASA said at the time that it put SOFIA on hold in order to evaluate the technical challenges standing in the way of
completing the observatory and beginning its first science flights.
"We placed
the program on hold last February because of programmatic and technical
issues," NASA Associate Administrator Rex Geveden, the agency's
third-in-command, said in a June 15 statement. "Since that time, we have
thoroughly reviewed the program and now are confident that SOFIA can resolve
those issues. However, it is not yet clear whether SOFIA represents the best
investment of space science funding, and we will need to consider funding
options and sources before we decide to continue the mission."
Geveden
chairs NASA's Program Management Council, the review board senior NASA managers
that met June 15 at Kennedy Space Center in Florida to take up the SOFIA question. Immediately following the meeting, NASA headquarters issued a press
release stating that the Program Management Council "concluded that there were
no insurmountable technical or programmatic challenges to the continued
development" of SOFIA. The release also said that the agency has a "technically
viable plan" for completing development of the flying observatory provided the
money can be found.
NASA has
spent approximately $500 million on SOFIA since 1996. Prior to putting the
program on hold, NASA estimated that SOFIA's first science flights would not
begin before 2008.
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