[extropy-chat] ASTRO: Hubble fate sealed

[Amara Graps]

Alfio Puglisi:

>Amara, is this bit about turning Cassini off just random talking, or do
>you have some information? Cassini already spent billions of $$, and it
>makes no sense to stop now that it's almost on target.

News regarding Cassini? It's still on, no 'inside' information regarding
that. There was a successful workshop last week in Bern on Titan, so
everyone is acting as if there's no change. In a couple of months
the Italian Amateur Astronomer's Association (UAI) will be releasing
thousands of posters and booklets for the public to highlight Cassini
(Saturn opposition is in March, so UAI will be distributing them at that
time). The agreement between ASI and UAI is in place now for our/my 
public education project, so I'm sure that UAI hopes Cassini is not 
canceled too!

The reason that I said what I said, is that I don't detect a difference
in NASA policy for turning off missions based on the fact that instruments
and spacecrafts have been built or designed and thousands (tens of thousands
or millions) of dollars already spent.  In these next weeks my IFSI group are
working hard to help save a NASA mission that was canceled over Christmas
that has already been designed and hundreds of thousands of dollars already
spent  (with partners: ASI and DLR and ESA). Sometimes NASA's policies looks
almost random to me.

Amara

-- 

Amara Graps, PhD
Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI)
Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF), Roma, ITALIA
Amara.Graps at ifsi.rm.cnr.it