NASA is cancelling a project to build an X-ray telescope designed to look for black holes and neutron stars due to cost overruns. The GEMS telescope, short for Gravity and Extreme Magnetism Small Explorer, had a budget of $105 million plus additional costs for launching it into space. The telescope was in the design state and no hardware had been built when the space agency pulled the plug on the GEMS mission. It cost $13 million only to cancel the mission.
NASA made the very difficult decision not to confirm GEMS into the implementation phase. An independent review of the GEMS budget commissioned by NASA projected that if completed, the mission would run 20 to 30 percent over budget.
“The instrument technology was more difficult and took longer than they had originally estimated” said Hertz.
Hertz said NASA had no immediate plans to launch a similar project. GEMS was said to be a two year mission that would have launched in 2014.
“Although there aren’t any other projects in the queue right now to measure polarized X-ray sources, there are a number of observatories which can address the science questions from different areas” said Hertz.
Keywords – NASA, GEMS, GEMS budget, GEMS telescope, X-ray telescope.
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