The proposed International X-ray Observatory, a NASA-ESA collaboration that would have hunted for supermassive black holes that formed early in the history of the universe, has fallen victim to NASA budget cuts.
November 6, 2010 I published "A Sad Casualty of Real Politick" on this blog, regarding cuts to scientific research and the impact.
It is ironic that this current post follows yesterday's "boldly go," a nod to the Star Trek franchise and famous intro catch phrase.
Unfortunately, research costs money and the national political will to accomplish.
My hope is that as we recover the economy, a lot of the research that was canceled, suspended and/or pushed out to the future will return as well.
"Two proposed space missions to study supermassive black holes and other high-energy phenomena have fallen into NASA’s gaping budget hole. Both missions were collaborations between NASA and the European Space Agency. When NASA recently determined that it could not come up with its share of funding for astrophysics research over the next few years, ESA decided it would have to scrap the projects as now envisioned. A third mission, planned by NASA alone, also appears to be in jeopardy.
"One of the missions, known as LISA, short for Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, would have been the first dedicated space mission to search for gravitational waves, ripples in spacetime predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity."
If you own a GPS, you're usng a real-world application of general relativity.
Science News Link: NASA Pulls Out Of Astrophysics Missions: Europe now on its own for spacecraft to study black holes, gravitational waves, by Ron Cowen
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