NASA Senior Review Results

NASA's 2010 Senior Review is out:

The assessment gave the three missions with the biggest budgets the highest ratings, and deemed them most deserving of continued funding. Planck, which maps radiation left over from the Big Bang, the Chandra X-ray observatory and the infrared Spitzer Space Telescope were judged to be the best of the 11 missions considered

I certainly intend to apply to use both Chandra and Spitzer in the coming years so I'm happy to see this. The committee recommended ending RXTE, INTEGRAL and WISE. I'm sad about WISE's extended mission but it's not unreasonable to argue that scanning the sky a second time is not as valuable as the first one. The mission goals should be met. Still, it's a bit tough to estimate the productivity of WISE in terms of papers when the astronomical community has not yet seen any data.