1. United States
2. Pa.
3. Letter

Congress needs to restore full funding (approximately $70M/yr) to NASA’s Chandra X-ray Space Observatory in any FY25 legislation. Chandra, the most powerful orbital X-ray telescope in history, is the vanguard of U.S. Leadership in High Energy Astrophysics, a Nobel-prize winning field that began in the US. Since taking office, the Trump Administration has shown hostility to American scientific work and research. Chandra is an established and operating scientific research program that only needs a comparatively small amount, comparable to the cost of a single F-16 fighter, of funding to continue operations. Instead this administration is choosing to mostly walk away from the entire program. Chandra is healthy, efficient, and returning its best-of-mission science. Its greatest discoveries lie ahead. Chandra is a keystone of multi-wavelength observations, providing enormous synergy with the James Webb Space Telescope and essentially all cutting-edge ground-and space-based telescopes for the next 5-10 years, vastly increasing our return-on-investment in these major facilities. It is critical that full funding to Chandra is restored before it’s too late. Without Congress, the proposed FY25 funding for Chandra would mandate devastating cuts to Mission Staffing by the fall of 2024, potentially leading to loss of the mission. Premature loss of Chandra will result in a death spiral for X-ray astronomy in the United States, resulting evaporation of a talented national workforce, and ceding U.S. leadership in the most important cosmic discoveries of the coming decade. The restoration of Chandra cannot be an unfunded mandate to NASA. Please take action to modestly increase the NASA Astrophysics Budget to ensure the U.S. continues making the greatest cosmic discoveries of the century.