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> NASA is just a really expensive organization achieving very little. Granted, human spaceflight is crazy expensive. And yet... Jet Propulsion Labs, to pick a

• watersb 2y ago
  (two days later) NOTE: I don't think that web page of 'Current' missions is up to date. For instance, the VSOP project is still on there; that was using a spacecraft designed mostly by JAXA, I believe, as an element of the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA). I was still attending the VLBA Operations meetings, early 2000's, and at that time it seemed that they were winding that project down. Data reduction and analysis of VLBA itself had been difficult to implement and wasn't totally integrated into the standard software package. Adding a telescope that was moving at orbital velocity made things quite spicy. I found it to be a profoundly humbling experience. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/space-very-long-baseline-interferometry-space-vlbi https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/space-very-long-baseline-i... (The VLBA is still very much alive, was part of Event Horizon Telescope, for example. But I don't think it uses the satellite.) I have no experience with the other projects, most of which I am pretty sure are indeed still active.