More kicking costs down the road?

As NASA struggles to make ends meet, we're likely to keeping seeing items like the piece on space.com today noting a Government Accountability Office report that says the Deep Space Network is suffering from a lack of upgrades and repairs. It's worth noting this is not the first time independent reviewers have raised this very worry.

Space.com's story about the latest GAO report, which will come out later today, quotes the 29-page reviewe as saying the Deep Space Network is hurting because of "deteriorating infrastructure and a limited capacity to serve additional missions. Systems infrastructure, which has been marked by extensive deferred maintenance, is aging and likely to become increasingly fragile and subject to breakdown at a time when demand is anticipated to increase. The potential exists for the loss of scientific data that would be difficult, if not impossible to replace."

Why does it matter? The network is an array of antennas that support everything from interplanetary spacecraft to radio astronomy. The communications network is critical to getting usable scientific data back from spacecraft exploring the solar system.

Here's a link to the full GAO report for those who want to read it.