The Division of Astronomical Sciences of the National Science Foundation conducted a Senior Review of its operating facilities during 2005-2006. The charge to the Senior Review committee read (in part): "The committee is asked to examine the impact and the gains that would result by redistributing ~$30M of annual spending from Division funds. ... Near-term needs for new investment lead us to conclude that we must try to generate the $30M in annual redistributed funding by the end of FY2011."

One of the resulting recommendations of the Senior Review was "The National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, which are heavily subscribed by other communities, should seek partners who will contribute personnel or financial support to the operation of Arecibo and the Very Long Baseline Array respectively by 2011 or else these facilities should be closed.

The VLBA Partnership activities of the New Initiatives Office are focused on (1) improving the scientific capabilities of the VLBA for all scientific users and potential partners; and (2) identifying and establishing the partnerships called out in the above recommendation. One of the partnerships under discussion is the use of the VLBA for precision spacecraft navigation; a report on Mars Approach Navigation using the VLBA was published by Martin-Mur and Highsmith for the 21st International Symposium on Space Flight Dynamics. An example of the improving capabilities of the VLBA is the VLBA Sensitivity Upgrade Program, which has included partnership contributions from the Max Planck Institut fuer Radioastronomie to improve the VLBA sensitivity by more than 30% in the band including the critical H₂O line at 22.235 GHz.

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