Congress is about to make a huge mistake for astronomy #SaveChandra

less than 1m read

·Nov 10, 2024

Congress is about to make a huge mistake in space. In the 1990s, NASA launched four telescopes called the Great Observatories. Their purpose was to study the universe across the electromagnetic spectrum. As the telescopes aged, NASA built replacements for each of them, except Chandra.

Chandra is the world's most powerful telescope for detecting x-rays, which reveal the biggest events in the universe. In 2017, Chandra found x-rays coinciding with the first observed gravitational waves. Last year, it recorded the most distant black hole ever.

But NASA just released their 2025 budget, and Chandra's funding has been cut 40%. If Congress approves this budget, layoffs could start this summer, with the telescope shutting down shortly after that. Without a replacement, losing Chandra would be what scientists are calling an extinction-level event for x-ray astronomy.

The telescope doesn't need much; its annual budget is far less than that of Hubble or Webb—only about the cost of a single F-16 fighter jet. Ask Congress to save Chandra, spread the hashtag, and go to savechandra.harvard.edu.

YOU LIVE IN THE PAST

Nonrenewable Energy Resources| AP Environmental science| Khan Academy

View All

15 Predictions for 2024

If you could see slightly into the future, what would you do with that information? Every successful person tries to peek into the future to figure out how to use it to their advantage. Those who are able to do it to see how the world will eventually look…

A Fish Called Obama | Sea of Hope: America's Underwater Treasures

We were up at Cure, which is at the, uh, farthest island out in the chain. We were down at 300 feet in an area where we’ve documented every single fish. On this reef is a species known only from the Hawaiian Islands. It’s truly the most unique set of fish…

Humans and ecosystems: how do vultures provide ecosystem services? | Khan Academy

Can you imagine eating bones for breakfast? It sounds crunchy and pretty gross, but that’s exactly what the lammerguyer’s eats. The lammergyr is a scavenger, which means it eats the decaying flesh and bones of dead animals. Rotting animal carcasses can be…

Joan Lasenby on Applications of Geometric Algebra in Engineering

So Joan, as we walk through geometric algebra, I think the best place to start might be through a more tangible example. You’re doing a project with drones here at Cambridge; can you explain that first? Yes, so we’re doing a project with drones. This is …

Khan Stories: Anjali

My name is Anjali. My father is a car mechanic, and my mother is a housewife. Vishal, the background which these students come from is very challenging. So the need for a center was to provide an environment which was conducive to academics. I used to f…

Lagrange multipliers, using tangency to solve constrained optimization

In the last video, I introduced a constrained optimization problem where we were trying to maximize this function f of x y equals x squared times y, but subject to a constraint that your values of x and y have to satisfy x squared plus y squared equals on…

Congress is about to make a huge mistake for astronomy #SaveChandra

More Articles