NASA has seen the future... and cancelled it.

NASA's Space Interferometry Mission, due to be launched next year, has been cancelled. This project was to seek out nearby Earth-like planets, and formed the basis for future missions to further study such planets. With this move, NASA, acting on the priorities of the scientific community, effectively forecloses on the possibility of finding new life-favorable planets in space. en.wikipedia.org...www.thespacereview.com/article/1711/1

Of course, the newfound planet suddenly disapears, and this happens 3 days ago.... interesting, could be a fluke, maybe not, we will just wait and see.

Originally posted by doom27
Of course, the newfound planet suddenly disapears, and this happens 3 days ago.... interesting, could be a fluke, maybe not, we will just wait and see.

Do you mean Gliese? As I understand it, the potentially inhabitible planet in the Gliese system did not "disappear" -- another team of scientists said that they could not confirm its existence. They did not say it was not there, they said that they couldn't be sure that it was there.

reply to post by Ross 54


You'll see many such cancellations as the coming months go by, some unannounced. The disinfo campaign is afoot. Whenever you see Nasa make videos disavowing earths encounter with the galactic plain, knowlege of any extra-solar planetary body approaching (a body they both named and discovered in '83), the new campaign to claim the timing was all wrong on the Mayan calander, and more such instances to come, you should worry. You'll see an intensive campaign ramping up from this point forward.

reply to post by astrogolf


Funny that you say that.
The dis-info campaign seems to be afoot:

End of Earth Postponed

Yes, the Swiss group that said they couldn't confirm the new Gliese planets had to admit that they were working at the very edge of what could be detected. Their failure to find the planets should not be taken as a refutation of the planets' existence. It could merely be because of the current limits of a rather new technology. The NASA cancellation was done very quietly. Most are probably still not aware of it. I do not think it will prove to be a very popular decision. The SIM and Planet Quest websites suddenly disappeared. NASA's excuse is that they sought out a range of scientific opinion, and that an expensive project to look for dark energy was preferred. With a limited budget, it was apparently to be one or the other, not both. I fault NASA and the scientists for an uninspired and spiritless attitude, turning their backs of the possibilities of life in the universe. Ross

reply to post by Ross 54


Not sure if this is to prevent disclosure,maybe I suppose.
But could be just that NASA are running lower on funds and getting hit by the depression/recession.

Seems foolish to me,that a country(USA) would plow decades of money and hard work into becoming the leader in space travel and technology ,then fail to keep them at the top level when money gets tight.

Maybe there is more to this as you postulate.

Flagged.

Originally posted by Ross 54
NASA's Space Interferometry Mission, due to be launched next year, has been cancelled. This project was to seek out nearby Earth-like planets, and formed the basis for future missions to further study such planets. With this move, NASA, acting on the priorities of the scientific community, effectively forecloses on the possibility of finding new life-favorable planets in space. en.wikipedia.org...www.thespacereview.com/article/1711/1

I'm sorry but I can't wait for the masses to wake up. So we went to the moon yet a majority of the space agencys (worldwide) only execute simulation type missions i.e. ESA 5 year Mars mission...inside a dome!

Don't know if there is any connection to preventing or slowing disclosure. I couldn't help thinking, though, that stopping a mission that could help uncover life-bearing planets could have this effect, intended or not. Finding such planets seems like a valuable half-way step, on the way to learning about intelligent ET life visiting Earth. Ross

reply to post by Ross 54


It's awful to hear that this project has been cancelled. We have come so far already in identifying extrasolar planets, and it would have taken us even leaps and bounds further in finding other earthlike worlds out there.

You mentioned that the planetquest site had disappeared. When I read that, I just had to check, because I often check that site for updates. It was still there just now:

planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov...

Yes, I see that PlanetQuest is back up now. Couldn't find it at all this morning. This outage may not have been connected to the SIM cancellation. I see it still carries the outline of the SIM mission, as if nothing has happened. Suppose they will have edit it out now. Some of the later exo-planet missions are now in doubt, too. They were intended to make more detailed follow-up observations, based on target systems found by SIM. Without new aiming data, they would be limited to those systems already known. It is highly questionable if most of these could harbor Earth-like planets. Most of them have near-in Jovian planets, which probably migrated inward, disrupting the orbits of, or even destroying, Earth-like planets in their paths. With so few promising systems to look at, it may well be argued that they, too, should be cancelled. Ross