What is wrong with requiring advocates of this research to properly submit requests for funding? Sounds like they've been operating to-date from some kind of slush fund. If the data are so valuable, let them put together a proposal to formally fund the extended missions.

The pot of money is not infinite.

Ed wrote:

"Martin 53N 1W" <ml_news@ddnospamddml1dd.co.uk.dd> wrote:

Max Power wrote:

Voyager probes in funding crisis

[...]

Although the Voyager probes are thought to have another 15 years of life
left in them, they are very expensive to run, costing Nasa about $4.2m a
year for operations and data analysis.

[...]

Why so very expensive?

Are the data rates so very slow that they need a lot of DSN time??

Got it in one.  The DSN used to do block accounting, but now all
missions must pay for dish time from their own budgets.  You can
thank Sean O'Keefe for that little change.  That bozo left NASA
couple weeks back -- let's hope the next bozo, er, Administrator,
is more than just a bean counter.