Government Shutdown 2013: On its 55th Birthday, NASA Furloughs Curiosity, Other Missions

NASA is mostly getting an unpaid vacation this week, as the federal government shutdown has resulted in the space agency's shuttering - except for Mission Control in Houston, which is keeping the astronauts in orbit afloat. The shutdown is an unpleasant birthday gift on the 55^th anniversary of NASA's first operational status, on October 1, 1958.

"NASA will shut down almost entirely," said President Obama on Monday in a statement. According to The New York Times' incredibly informative infographic, about 97 percent of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's more than 18,000 employees will be furloughed. A furlough is a temporary unpaid leave for employees due to the company - or government - not having a budget to pay them.

The shutdown began officially on October 1 at 12:00 am Easter Time, as Congress failed to compromise on a new budget by the deadline of the new fiscal year, which begins on Oct. 1. Other major federal government agencies, like the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Commerce, and Department of the Interior - which includes the National Park system - have also been mostly closed down.

According to Forbes - which got its hands on the plan for the shutdown submitted by NASA to the Office of Management of Budget before that government site, itself, was shuttered - about 600 NASA employees are going to remain working to service ongoing space operations for satellites and manned missions.

That means that the astronauts living on the International Space Station aren't stranded: "To protect the life of the crew, as well as the assets themselves, we would continue to support planned operations of the ISS during any planned funding hiatus." Mission Control (and other administrative services for the ISS) will remain up and running.

SpaceX and Orbital Sciences - two commercial space companies on contract with NASA to deliver resupply payloads to the ISS soon - are still scheduled to launch if those missions are determined by NASA to be necessary to sustaining the "life and property" currently in orbit. Other commercial enterprises that have contracts with NASA will probably lose money, especially if the shutdown continues for any amount of time.

NASA's less essential planned missions, research, and other projects will all halt. "If a satellite mission has not yet been launched, work will generally cease on that project. The extent of support necessary and the time needed to safely cease project activities will depend on whether any of the activities are of a hazardous nature," said NASA in the shutdown plan, now unavailable to the public, due to said shutdown.

One unessential project that has been shutdown, according to the Washington Post, may not seem unessential to paranoid sky watchers: Asteroid Watch. This project, known on Twitter as @AsteroidWatch, is run by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Near Earth Object Office. It tracks objects that fall through the atmosphere, along with larger, more threatening asteroids like 2012 DA14, which in February of 2013 had a "record-setting close approach" which took the 164-foot chunk of rock closer than some geosynchronous orbiting satellites.

In the event of government shutdown, we will not be posting or responding from this account. We sincerely hope to resume tweets soon.

— Asteroid Watch (@AsteroidWatch) October 1, 2013

But if you think it's just fun-to-think-about projects like Asteroid Watch or scientific tinkering that's going without funding, think again. The Mars Curiosity rover, the technical marvel that has immensely accelerated humankind's discovery and knowledge of Earth's closest neighbor - just days ago discovering water permeating the surface soil on Mars, among many other things - is being powered down.