Griffin and the scientists

NASA administrator Mike Griffin is certainly going to get some feedback from the scientific community this week regarding what the agency’s funding priorities should be for its science programs. Space News reports that the science subcommittee of the recently reconstituted NASA Advisory Council will meet this week at the University of Maryland. That meeting, scheduled for May 3-4, will allow scientists and the general public (who will get a half-hour comment period during the two-day meeting) to discuss the state of the FY07 budget proposal and what changes should be made. Also, Tuesday afternoon Griffin will appear at an open session of the Space Studies Board of the National Academies.

Will those meetings spur any changes? “If there is a competing trend in one direction or another I would be heavily motivated to go where they want us to go,” Griffin told Space News in an interview late last month. “If there is a cacophony of opinions … then we will probably stick with what we’ve got.” There’s already some feedback on what the community wants: a survey of the planetary science community conducted last month by the Planetary Science Institute found that a clear majority thought the top funding priority should be research and analysis (R&A) programs, the same programs that saw the funding cut in the FY07 budget proposal. R&A programs were followed by small- and medium-class missions, with large “flagship” missions in last place.