The class I'm teaching right now is "writing intensive" - so the homework is biased towards short essays and written discourse.
One of my standard assignments is to have the students pick a NASA mission: a past mission, and a current mission, and a future mission, and write a summary of the mission plan and/or accomplishments.
So, what do I do now?
Ask them to pick a planned future mission that has now been cancelled and write what it might have done if flown?
More like this
IXO and LISA are dead and disbanded as NASA missions.
We are looking at a very thin pipeline and few new missions for a while, unless there is drastic new direction from above and strong guidance on funding.
Every other year NASA conducts a Senior Review of its astrophysics missions that have completed their nominal mission and are requesting an extension of their mission.
The 2012 review panel just reported.
This just in from NASA:
So LISA is moving ahead with a possible all European mission to look for low frequency gravitational radiation
Next Steps for LISA
Simple. For a future mission, they can either write about JWST *or* they can write about anything else. Can't have both together. You get one, or a lot of the others.
JWST, with it's truly scary new life cycle cost, is not only strangling NASA astrophysics, but is going to end up hurting other NASA disciplines (planetary, earth, helio, technology, human space flight, and maybe even aero) as well. So when JWST is launched, we move on to all those other great astronomy missions we had to postpone, right? Nope. That's when we'll move on to paying back all the other disciplines, who will look to astrophysics to meet their own cost overruns.
Think of it as astrophysics with a mortgage. Just keep on payin'.
I hope your students think about our current quandry with JWST, and the world it may leave them with. Scientifically richer, but fiscally and opportunistically much poorer.
JWST represents awesome science, for sure. But you can save JWST, or you can save space astrophysics. Take your pick.
Steinn, you could ask them to write about past & present NASA missions & future ESA missions!?
"Henry" said ....
"astrophysics with a mortgage". What an excellent slogan! Just imagine the T-shirt possibilities.