Government shutdown: NASA turns 55 – and turns out the lights

The government shutdown includes 97 percent of NASA employees. If anyone is out there, don't count on NASA to answer the next alien tweet. 

|
David J. Phillip/AP
Cars pass by NASA's Johnson Space Center on Tuesday in Houston. Most of the space center's employees are now on furlough during a partial government shutdown that has put a kibosh on all NASA's non-essential activities.

Fifty-five years ago, on this day, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law a lofty dream: the establishment of a space agency.

“Congress declares that it is the policy of the United States that activities in space should be devoted to peaceful purposes for the benefit of all humankind,” wrote the authors of the 1958 National Aeronautics and Space Act.

That’s right – it’s NASA’s birthday. And it’s a day brimming with peace and optimism for humankind and the exploration of the cosmos and – oh, never mind.

When Congress failed to reach an agreement last night that would pass a budget in advance of the Oct. 1 deadline, NASA joined all US government operations in screeching to a near total stop. That means that as the space agency celebrates more than five decades of reaching for the stars – including a fair share of setbacks and disasters throughout the years – the finger-pointing and heel-digging in Congress has put the kibosh on the agency’s planning for future missions.

It also means that the nice graphic that NASA prepared for the occasion, which outlined its past achievements and its hopes for the future, is now nowhere to be found, after the agency’s website was shut down.

And what about the six astronauts floating some 250 miles above the Earth in the International Space Station (ISS)?

In a statement at the White House last night, President Barak Obama emphasized that the cankerous Congressional impasse would not affect those folks.  “NASA will shut down almost entirely, but Mission Control will remain open to support the astronauts serving on the Space Station,” he said.

During the shutdown, NASA is receding into a self-sustaining hibernation, whittling its staff to the minimum required to support the ISS, as well as all existing satellite missions. Other ongoing operations are, in effect, being put to sleep: The Mars Curiosity rover will be put in “protective mode,” according to the International Business Times, and other missions will continue to funnel out data but with no one to sift through it all.

And, NASA's Twitter feeds are going on hiatus.

“Due to government shutdown, we will not be posting or responding from this account. Farewell, humans. Sort it out yourselves,” tweeted the operators of NASA’s Voyager 2’s Twitter account, last night.

Meanwhile, the agency’s planning for future missions – where to land the next mission on Mars; which asteroid to lasso; and what to do with a future lander on Europe – has gone quiet.

The shutdown will put some 97 percent of NASA’s staffers on un-paid leave: just 549 of the agency’s employees are expected to work, out of its some 18,250 staffers.

In an email to staffers last night, the NASA’s Office of Human Capital Management outlined the procedures that furloughed employees will follow as of midnight Monday night.

“During the furlough, you will be in a non-pay, non-duty status,” said the email. “You must remain away from your work site, and may not work at home or in another location, unless and until recalled. NASA laptop computers, smart phones, and other resources used for remote access must be turned off and may not be used while you are furloughed.”

Some NASA workers had been asked to report to work on Tuesday morning to finish necessary activities, but would be dismissed within 30 minutes or less, it said.

The email also included a template for furloughed employee’s out-of-office emails and voicemail messages: “NASA is currently closed due to a lapse in government funding. I am in furlough status; therefore, I am unable to respond to your message at this time.”

In other words, if anyone is out there, Congress is too busy to take your call. Try back another time, ET.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Government shutdown: NASA turns 55 – and turns out the lights
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2013/1001/Government-shutdown-NASA-turns-55-and-turns-out-the-lights
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe