James Webb, Hubble space telescopes face reduction in operations

The James Webb Space Telescope is pictured here before being folded up for launch. Credit: NASA

The teams operating the Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) — NASA’s two most in-demand observatories and among its most scientifically productive missions — are preparing to reduce operations due to funding shortfalls, officials said last week at the summer meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Anchorage, Alaska.

The comments came at a June 10 town hall held by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), which is based in Baltimore, Maryland, and operates JWST and Hubble for NASA.

Speaking at the town hall, Neill Reid, multi-mission project scientist at STScI, said the institute is looking at a likely reduction of around 25 to 35 percent in science operations for JWST. The institute is also likely to reduce or drop support for several of Hubble’s instruments; they will still be available for observations, but the telescope’s staff will no longer be able to support them with regular calibration updates.

The threats to JWST and Hubble are due to a combination of factors, some of which have been brewing for years. Over the past year, NASA and STScI officials have warned of budgetary challenges and operational reductions due to flat budgets and inflation.

Another factor is funding cuts to both telescopes contained in the Trump administration’s budget proposal for 2026 — especially JWST, which would see its operating budget cut by 25 percent relative to planned 2024 operations, from $187 million to $140 million.

The cut to Hubble — down from $93.3 million in planned funds for 2024 to $85 million in 2026 — is less of a surprise. The Biden administration’s 2025 budget request, which was never enacted, also contained a planned reduction in Hubble funding, down to $87.5 million in 2026. In 2024, NASA conducted a review of Hubble’s operations, seeking to reduce costs.

A document posted to NASA’s website May 30 says the Trump administration’s budget proposal “supports continued operations” of Hubble and JWST “at slightly reduced budget levels which assume operational efficiencies in FY 2026 and out.”

Budgetary issues

Speaking at the AAS town hall, STScI’s Neill Reid said Hubble’s budget has remained essentially flat over the past decade while inflation has increased, resulting in a drop in spending power of 30 percent. Any additional cuts to Hubble’s budget “will result in significant loss to science,” an STScI slide stated.

Part of the challenge facing Hubble, which launched in 1990, is that it “has lasted longer than people expected,” Reid told Astronomy. “NASA’s looking at how much money it has. And it’s trying to do as many things as possible. … If it were to build up the Hubble budget, it would be cutting something else.” STScI has made Hubble’s operation leaner, but eventually, the only way to save more money is to “stop doing things,” Reid said.

Unlike Hubble, JWST is still in the midst of its prime mission. The telescope, which cost $10 billion to construct, was launched in 2021 and began operations the following year. NASA originally hoped the telescope would operate for 10 years, but thanks to a highly accurate launch, there is enough fuel on board to last for more than 20 years.

Even if the Trump administration’s proposed budget cuts are rejected by Congress, JWST was already facing budgetary pressures. That’s partly because the observatory’s operations budget set by NASA in 2011 was idealistically low, said Reid.

“There was a sound amount of optimism that went into some of those, and there’s also been inflation,” said Reid. “So then you have the [presidential budget request] that comes in and cuts more. So we may be looking at reducing operations by 25 to 35 percent next year.”

Reid said STScI does not yet have a specific plan to deal with JWST’s budget shortfalls, but it will almost certainly involve reducing staff.

“It’s fewer people, really,” Neill Reid, multi-mission project scientist at STScI, told Astronomy. “[JWST has] got 17 different modes. Each of those modes needs people to support it, to calibrate it, to keep it going. So, if you cut the funding, you have fewer people. And you can’t ask people to do twice as much work. So what will happen is that there will be potentially fewer modes available. There will be less user support.”

It could also lead to less time spent taking observations, said Reid. “You may end up being much less efficient. There are fewer people to work on the scheduling. So you may not be able to put things together in the same way.” Overall, Reid said, “it’s going to affect how we can help the community do the full range of science Webb is capable.”

Scientific workhorses

As for Hubble, STScI says it will not make any changes to the telescope’s operations until it receives “contractual direction” from NASA to do so. STScI has not said it intends to reduce the modes or instruments available on Hubble, and it will be able to handle some basic quality checks, like trying to reduce hot pixels. “There’s a lot of work being done at the moment now in kind of a close-out to make sure we’re in the best position to do that,” said Reid.

But the institute will not be able to supply calibration updates for some of Hubble’s instruments. These regularly updated files account for changes to detectors’ sensitivity and are necessary to ensure that the telescope’s brightness measurements are accurate. Instead, STScI will rely on the wider community of scientists who apply for Hubble observations and use the telescope’s data “to kind of self-support for those” instruments, said Reid.

In addition to the telescopes’ prolific media presence, both Hubble and JWST are highly scientifically productive. Hubble, which recently celebrated its 35th anniversary, produced a record 1,073 peer-reviewed publications last year. Its orbit is decaying, but the telescope is not predicted to reenter the atmosphere until 2033. JWST is performing better than NASA expected, has produced around 1,200 papers since beginning operations in 2022, and is still ramping up its output of science.

Reid noted that STScI has been spared the massive cuts that the Trump administration is targeting for NASA science as a whole (a 47 percent cut) and the National Science Foundation (a 56 percent cut), which has STScI feeling “a certain amount of survival guilt.”

Compared to NSF, said Reid, “I think we’re in a slightly different situation. But it is up to us to push back and emphasize the importance of NASA science leadership to our representatives. You could even tell them that science makes America safer, stronger, and more prosperous, if you felt it was worth it.”