NASA Maven Launch in threat from US Government shutdown

The upcoming Nov. 18 blastoff of NASA’s new MAVEN Mars orbiter is threatened by today’s US Federal Government shutdown. 

Launch processing work has now ceased! 

Spacecraft preps had been in full swing when MAVEN was unveiled to the media inside the clean room at the Kennedy Space Center on Sept. 27, 2013. 

Credit: Ken Kremer

MAVEN's on time launch is endangered by the endless political infighting in Washington DC and the bitter gridlock could cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars or more on this mission alone!

Launch preparations at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) have ceased today when workers were ordered to stay home, said the missions top scientist.

"MAVEN is shut down right now" Prof. Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN's principal Investigator, of the University of Colorado at Boulder, stated today.

"Which means that civil servants and work at government facilities [including KSC] have been undergoing an orderly shutdown," Jakosky went on to say.

The nominal interplanetary launch window for NASA's $650 Million MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN Mission) mission to study the Red Planet's upper atmosphere only extends about three weeks until Dec. 7.

If MAVEN misses the window of opportunity this year, liftoff atop the Atlas V rocket would have to be postponed until early 2016 because the Earth and Mars only align favorably for launches every 26 months.

Any launch delay could potentially add upwards of tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in unbudgeted costs to maintain the spacecraft and rocket – and that's money that NASA absolutely does not have in these fiscally austere times.

MAVEN and much of NASA are not considered "essential" – despite having responsibility for hundreds of ongoing mission operations costing tens of billions of dollars that benefit society here on Earth. So about 97% of NASA employees were furloughed today.