The telescope ran out of coolant in 2009, but it continued operating for quite a long time after that. The article says that one of the biggest concerns is the difficulty of communicating with it, as it falls further from Earth in its Earth-trailing orbit.<p>Compared to the 2.5-year mission specification, its lifetime was long. I know NASA over-engineers, and extends each mission as long as <i>some</i> hardware operates (see Opportunity), but that's still an impressive mission lifetime.
A nice article, but it would have been good to hear more about the specific justifications for shutting the telescope down in advance of JWST's launch. $14 million/year doesn't seem like that much, in the grand scheme of things.<p>Heck, why shut it down at all? Document the communication protocols and orbital elements, and turn it over to amateurs.[1]<p>We seem to have put an awful lot of our eggs in the JWST basket.<p>[1] <a href="https://uhf-satcom.com/dsn/dsnstart" rel="nofollow">https://uhf-satcom.com/dsn/dsnstart</a>