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NASA Considers Privatizing GALEX Astrophysics Satellite
hogghogg writes "The GALEX spacecraft (surveying the Universe in ultraviolet wavelengths at which the atmosphere is close to opaque) is coming to the end of its budget life, but it hasn't finished imaging the entire sky and is still (fairly) functional. A group at Caltech wants to keep it running, so NASA is considering transfer of ownership under the Stevenson-Wydler Technology Innovation Act, which 'allows the transfer of government-owned excess research equipment to educational institutions and non-profit organizations.' Many NASA missions are terminated for budget reasons at the end of a prescribed period, even while the hardware is still highly functional. Although this is the first-ever transfer from NASA of a functioning satellite, maybe this is just the start for a class of privately run astronomical and Earth-observing facilities in space?"
The only thing you would probably want to do is make sure any sales come with a mandate that any future data collected on the satellite has to be publicly released or shared freely with NASA (you could even set it up so the private organization gets a year to use the data themselves before they release it). I would hate to see a situation where the Federal government (and the taxpayers) build a satellite (or other technological marvel), and then a senator yanks the funding, and it gets sold at bargin price to a private entitiy in the senator's neighboorhood. I know that sounds fantastical, but we have to prepare for these types of contingencies.