The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a space-based observatory developed under the leadership of NASA and with ESA, which entered orbit in 2022 and has been on active duty for three years and has made incredible discoveries in this short time, is facing possible budget cuts. As JWST continues to exceed astronomers’ expectations, outages are said to take effect in the fall.

Halfway through JWST’s official five-year primary mission, he notes that the telescope is performing better than expected and demand for observing time far outstrips supply. While Jennifer Lotz, Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), said that the telescope has not yet reached its peak scientific capacity and is performing well beyond our expectations, Macarena Garcia, JWST project scientist at the institute, said, “In summary, it truly delivers on its promise to revolutionize science.”

Budget cuts already predicted for JWST

Although JWST’s design life is set at 10 years, officials expect the telescope to operate much longer than this period. The only consumable material of the telescope is propellant, and this propellant is expected to last for more than 20 years. This makes astronomers hopeful that JWST could remain active into the 2040s, during which time it could operate in parallel with the Habitable Worlds Observatory, another large telescope that could be launched in the early 2040s.

While astronomers’ requests for observation time from JWST reached record levels, it was reported that in NASA’s budget proposal for the 2025 fiscal year, the fund allocated to JWST was 187 million dollars, of which 127 million dollars was allocated for telescope operations and 60 million dollars was allocated for scientific grants given to astronomers using the telescope. . This budget is expected to remain constant until 2029.

Tom Brown, who leads the JWST mission at STScI, explained that the telescope faces a 20 percent cut in its operational budget. These cuts could begin to be implemented at the beginning of fiscal year 2026, around October. It is stated that these interruptions will have great impacts on the scientific productivity of the telescope and may have negative consequences in many areas such as supporting astronomers, the availability of some modes of the telescope and resolving problems in the telescope.