Bad Astronomy

Swift passes senior review!

I’ve just been informed by Neil Gehrels, Principal Investigator on the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Explorer Mission, that Swift passed its senior review at NASA, a top-to-bottom review of the entire mission that takes place every two years. This is wonderful news! Swift is doing fabulous science, and this means it will be funded for at least two more years. After that, it will be reviewed again, and if all goes well it will be continued once again for two years.

I have not heard any news about the other missions being reviewed – FUSE, GALEX, INTEGRAL, RXTE, Suzaku, WMAP, and XMM-Newton (I work with XMM-Newton as well, so I’m eagerly waiting to see what happens for its review) – and I’ll post more about them when I hear more info.