Telescópio Espacial James Webb em perigo

Já para o importantíssimo Telescópio Espacial Hubble passou-se o mesmo: os Republicanos anti-ciência a cortarem os fundos porque conhecimento não lhes interessa para nada. Deram o braço a torcer na missão para reparar o Telescópio, porque lhes foi dito que aumentaria o poder dos EUA no espaço.

Agora passa-se o mesmo. O Obama queria dar mais dinheiro para o Telescópio Espacial James Webb, mas os Republicanos não deixam. Pelo contrário, decidiram cortar o $$ para fazer ciência.

Público:
“O sucessor do telescópio espacial Hubble arrisca-se a nunca sair do planeta Terra. E a culpa não será da falta de vaivéns, mas sim dos cortes no orçamento da NASA: uma subcomissão da Câmara dos Representantes aprovou ontem, numa votação prévia (voto oral) uma lei orçamental que não atribui nem um cêntimo ao Telescópio Espacial James Webb — o sucessor do Hubble.”

Discovery News:
“NASA will receive funds of $16.8 billion for the next financial year, which is $1.6 billion below last year’s level and $1.9 billion below what the White House requested. The kicker is that this reigns in NASA funding to pre-2008 levels.
The science media focus will likely remain on JWST, however, a joint project between NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). The complex infrared telescope — the components of which are currently undergoing advanced space worthiness tests — is designed to see deeper into the Universe than the 20-year-old Hubble.
Sitting in the Earth-sun L2 point (a location 1.5 million kilometers from the Earth’s surface, constantly in our planet’s shadow), JWST is designed to see the most distant objects in the Cosmos, 100 times fainter than Hubble could spot, imaging the earliest objects that formed shortly after the Big Bang.
(…)
It seems the Republican-led Commerce, Justice, and Science Subcommittee is now recommending that the $3 billion already spent on the JWST should simply be written off as a bad idea.
(…)
Considering JWST will be as revolutionary as Hubble, investing more funds accompanied by a management overhaul (a solution that has already been enacted by NASA) would make more sense, right? After all, NASA doesn’t get the cash returned from canceled missions to be spent on other fun spacecraft.
Alas, political points-scoring is usually more important than critically analyzing the scientific merits of continuing with “expensive” missions such as the James Webb Space Telescope. And sadly, NASA has to make do with the shrinking budget it’s given; there’s no government bailout plan for space agencies.
Now we’ll have to wait until the Senate, White House and the full House of Representatives have weighed in on the federal budget before it is passed as law. Only then will JWST’s fate be sealed.”

Em pleno século XXI, é inacreditável como as forças anti-conhecimento, as forças do obscurantismo, continuam a estar presentes no poder dos centros de decisão.