Harvard Center for Astrophysics Facing Financial Strain Following NASA Budget Cuts

The Center for Astrophysics — a collaboration with the Smithsonian Museum and one of Harvard’s top research centers — is facing a declining budget following NASA’s proposal to reduce The Chandra X-ray Observatory’s fiscal year 2025 budget.

All operations of the Chandra X-ray Observatory are handled by the Chandra X-ray Center, which is managed by CfA scientists and staff. Currently, the Chandra operates on roughly $70 million per year to recruit top research scientists and service the spacecraft. However, it is facing a $29 million cut, bringing its funding to $41 million for the fiscal year 2025. By 2029, Chandra will have a projected budget of $5 million.

Mark Clampin, the director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters, wrote in an emailed statement to The Crimson that NASA is facing a “challenging budget environment” after receiving $1 billion less than the $8.261 billion requested as part of Congress’s 2024 fiscal year appropriations.

Clampin stated that the decision to reduce the budget of both Chandra and Hubble — another one of NASA’s flagship X-ray observatories — was made to “maintain a balanced Astrophysics portfolio, in this decade and the next.”

“Due to budget constraints, NASA proposed to reduce the budgets of Hubble and Chandra in the fiscal year 2025 budget request,” Clampin wrote.

The financial strain on CfA has already made an impact, with the center announcing in March that it would close the John G. Wolbach Library over “financial considerations.”

Fabio Paccuci, a postdoctoral fellow at the CfA, said that the proposed budget reduction to the Chandra X-ray observatory “came as a surprise” to CfA affiliates, adding that the Chandra team received a high performance evaluation in an internal NASA review. Paccuci also added that there are no planned substitutions for Chandra, which he said was “the only high resolution X-ray telescope available in the entire world.”

“There are no major problems to Chandra right now; Chandra could continue to operate for another 10 years, at least, because there is fuel,” Paccuci said. “There is everything that Chandra needs to continue its operations.”

Paccuci added that the projected budget reduction to $5 million by the fiscal year 2029 would imply the unnecessary closure of Chandra, which is already operating on a slim budget.

“If this is not reversed, this would mean that Chandra is closing down,” Paccuci said. “There is no way that Chandra can operate normally or even semi-normally under this budget.”

Harvard CfA Director Lisa J. Kewley wrote in an emailed statement to The Crimson that the budget of the CfA was complex and involves “multiple funding streams.”

“Each federal funding stream is being reviewed and, in some cases, difficult decisions are under consideration due to the overall federal budget landscape and expected reductions,” she said.

Paccuci said Chandra’s closure would have long-term impacts on the astronomical community in the United States.

If the budget cut is realized, “we would lose talent,” said Paccuci. “New grad students, new undergraduate students will not train on high-resolution X-ray data” and “people that know how to do it will retire at some point.”

“This is not something that can be rebuilt in a few months,” he said.

Clampin, the NASA official, said the agency would be exploring other financial options to keep both Chandra and Hubble open in the future.

“NASA is holding a review for Chandra and Hubble this spring to seek community guidance on options for a future science operations model that reduces the cost of science operations for both observatories,” he wrote.

But Paccuci said the cuts would dramatically affect progress in the field, adding that it could take up to 30 years to implement a replacement observatory.

“I will be basically at the end of my career,” he said.

—Staff writer Elizabeth Peng can be reached at elizabeth.peng@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Nicholas J. Frumkin can be reached at nicholas.frumkin@thecrimson.com.