By Jeff Foust on 2005 June 2 at 7:51 am ET Last week’s report that NASA’s Voyager 1 was approaching the outer frontier of the solar system got the attention of newspaper editorial writers: not because of their heartfelt interest in space science, but because of reports that Voyager 1 and other spacecraft were threatened with termination as a budget-saving measure. Condemnation of the proposal came far and wide:
- The Roanoke (VA) Times decries this “ignoble end to such a visionary quest” in order to fund “President Bush’s election-year pledge to send men to Mars – a ridiculously expensive project of limited scientific usefulness.”
- The Harrisburg (PA) Patriot-News concludes that the Voyagers “appear likely to join the ground-breaking Hubble telescope as projects of exceptional worth that have now become expendable.”
- The South Florida Sun-Sentinel believes the Voyagers “deserve a chance to complete their missions”.
Regular readers, though, know that these concerns are a bit misplaced: in late April NASA decided to suspend plans to cut funding for Voyager 1 and other missions scheduled for termination until a senior review is completed later this year. (The folks in Harrisburg should also note that Hubble is not nearly as expendable as they may think.) Voyager 1’s not dead yet.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 June 1 at 7:29 am ET One of the major events during last month’s International Space Development Conference in Washington was a presentation by former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart about a potential impact hazard posed by 2004 MN4, a near Earth object (NEO). (I have a detailed summary of his presentation, and responses from a couple other experts who also spoke at the conference, in this week’s issue of The Space Review.) The purpose of his talk and paper was to make two recommendations to Congress: have it ask the National Research Council to review the threat posed by this particular NEO, and also have the NRC study and recommend which government agency should have responsibility for NEO impact mitigation measures.
Wired News reports Wednesday that Schweickart has found some support for his recommendations from Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA). Rohrabacher said that he will ask Congress and the President to “take action on this by the end of the year.” Rohrabacher’s support is not at all surprising, given that he has long talked about the need to discover and track potentially-hazardous NEOs, and has sponsored legislation like HR 1022 to expand such search efforts, and HR 1023, which would provide awards to amateur astronomers for NEO discoveries. (HR 1022 was approved by the House Science Committee last month, while the full House approved HR 1023 by a voice vote last month.) Rohrabacher, however, was less supportive of a call by Schweickart to mount a spacecraft mission to 2004 MN4; such a mission, which would cost on the order of $300 million, would study the object and also place a radio transponder there that would aid in tracking the asteroid and refining the odds of an impact.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 May 31 at 7:17 am ET The Baltimore Sun reports today that the billion-dollar cost overrun for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has gained the attention of Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD). She told the Sun that she was “shocked” with the news earlier this month about the cost increase. “There should be no disruption to the program, the science or the work force at Goddard,” she said. “I expect nothing less than a thorough and independent review to get to the bottom of these problems and fix them.” Mikulski’s attention is not surprising, given that the program is run out of NASA Goddard and science operations of JWST will be run out of the Space Telescope Science Institute, both located in Maryland. Also not surprising is the concern noted by scientists in the article about the budget flexibility granted to NASA in its current budget, which breaks down old barriers between science and manned spaceflight programs. “That NASA could use any of its money in any way it chooses has pretty serious ramifications for space science at NASA,” said one astronomer.
Update 12:45 pm: An alert reader pointed out this page which lists presentations to a meeting earlier this month of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. Included is this brief presentation titled “JWST Cost Growth”, which features a breakdown of the $1.08 billion increase in the program’s cost.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 May 27 at 8:25 am ET Every other spring, including this spring, I say to myself, “Wouldn’t it be cool to go to the Paris Air Show?” Then I realize that I have no time and no budget for such a trip (and the current lousy dollar-euro exchange rate doesn’t help matters.) So I’ll have to be content staying on this side of the Atlantic again this summer, and instead offer a quick update on European space policy.
Earlier this week the European Commission announced that it had completed the “first elements” of an overall European Space Policy. The policy’s two flagships with be the Galileo satellite navigation system and Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES). The policy also features continued development of advanced satellite communications technologies, and calls on ESA to continue space technology development and scientific exploration. The policy expects that Europe will “maintain and develop” cooperation with the US but also “build up its space partnership” with Russia. Along those lines, the British newspaper The Observer reported Sunday that ESA may cooperate with Russia on the development of Kliper, a proposed successor to the Soyuz spacecraft, potentially giving Europe independent manned access to space. The policy is scheduled to be completed by November and, as one might imagine, its programs will “be subject to normal budgetary and programmatic approval procedures.”
However, one of those cornerstones of the European space policy may be in danger. On Sunday the French will go to the polls in a referendum on the EU constitution; polls suggest that voters will reject the constitution. Such a vote could disrupt a number of European initiatives, including Galileo, Space News reported this week (subscription required). The no vote would not kill the project, according to the report, because it is not tied to the constitution, but the effect of a French rejection of the constitution could at least cause some temporary disruption.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 May 26 at 5:56 am ET Remember the on-again, off-again, sorta-on-sorta-off strategic roadmapping process? A reader notes that some of the fruits of this effort have been released: some of the science roadmap reports have been published on NASA HQ’s web site. These cover topics like Mars exploration, planetary science, astronomy, and the like. Missing, it appears, is the lunar exploration roadmap, as well as those on ISS, space transportation, and other non-science efforts. I have not had a chance to read any of these reports yet, which average about 50-60 pages each, but they do look interesting.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 May 25 at 6:11 am ET The good news for supporters of NASA is that the Science, State, Justice, and Commerce subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee provided effectively full funding for NASA when it approved a FY2006 appropriations bill Tuesday. In fact, it added $15 million to the President’s request, a far cry from the sharp cuts the subcommittee proposed last year in the FY05 budget. According to a committee press release, the subcommittee provided full funding for the shuttle program, added $40 million for NASA science programs, and restored funding for NASA’s aeronautics programs to the FY05 level of $906 million, $54 million that what Bush requested.
The bad news becomes evident once one does the math above. Adding $94 million to aeronautics and science programs, but increasing the overall NASA budget by $15 million, means that there’s a net $79 million of cuts to other NASA programs, not specified in the press release. Space News (subscription required) picked up on this as well, but a House Appropriations Committee spokesman was not able to provide details on where those cuts were made.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 May 23 at 7:25 am ET After last week’s New York Times report that the US Air Force and the Bush Administration were considering policy changes that would permit the deployment of weapons in space, the issue is still reverberating among columnists. A prime example is a syndicated column by Ann McFeatters, the Washington bureau chief for two newspapers. She believes that deploying space-based weapons would cost “hundreds of billions of dollars”, although she doesn’t back up that claim with any detailed estimates. She noted that retiring acting Air Force secretary Peter Teets “did not spell out the secret projects already under way to use space to launch weapons.” (If they’re secret, how does she know how much they’ll cost?)
Ms. McFeatters also used the column to take a swipe at the Vision for Space Exploration, noting that since the president’s January 2004 announcement (which included “robotic missions on the moon in 2008″, a misreading of the his statement) “we haven’t heard much about going to Mars from the president.” Fortunately, the column includes her email address if you’d care to correct any of her misconceptions about milspace policy or the VSE.
Offering a useful reality check is Dwayne Day, who writes in The Space Review that Air Force officials have often promised unrealistic space systems without the broader support of the Air Force, but critics of such systems fail to pick up on this. All the discussion of “rods from God” and other fanciful systems, he argues, obscures the real problem with military space programs: chronic, severe cost overruns and schedule delays on programs like SBIRS that have hurt the Air Force’s credibility with Congress.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 May 21 at 6:56 am ET The International Space Station is facing a number of key policy issues: how to maintain US access to Soyuz spacecraft in spite of the Iran Non-proliferation Act, managing an assembly schedule that has to wrap up when the shuttle retires in 2010, finding the best alternatives—commercial or otherwise—for cargo access to ISS, and so on. So it’s reassuring to see that ESA is doing its part by starting a study on “possible future cultural utilization” of ISS. The study, to be performed by Arts Catalyst, an independent arts organization based in London, will consult with “artists and cultural practitioners from a broad spectrum of disciplines” on how they could take advantage of the ISS as well as ground-support facilities. To their credit, Arts Catalyst is not new to the use of space, or at least microgravity, to support art, having explored the issue for several years. Given all the issues facing the station, though, it makes one wonder if ESA’s priorities should be focused more on ensuring that there will be a complete, accessible station in the first place.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 May 21 at 6:46 am ET The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), widely billed as the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, is facing some serious problems that could lead to scaling back or even canceling the mission. Denver’s Rocky Mountain News and Sky & Telescope magazine both report that JWST is facing potential cost overruns of up to $1 billion, raising the total cost of the mission to over $3 billion. Part of that cost is associated with overruns by prime contractor Northrop Grumman and its subcontractors, while the rest is because the launch of the telescope “could cost more than expected”. (While not explicitly stated, this last statement suggests that NASA is no longer expecting to launch JWST for “free” on an Ariane 5 in exchange for giving ESA a share of the telescope’s observing time, a move that would have required Bush Administration approval under both the old and new space transportation policy.) In response, NASA has asked scientists to consider shrinking the telescope’s diameter from 6.5 to 4 meters, and to remove some of the planned instruments. (Original plans for the then-named Next Generation Space Telescope called for an eight-meter mirror.) Scientists, though, are against such a move, telling S&T that a descoped JWST “wouldn’t be able to compete scientifically with the next generation of giant ground-based telescopes” except in small portions of the infrared. If other efforts to change the telescope or otherwise reduce its costs fail, “outright cancellation is a very real possibility” according to S&T.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 May 20 at 5:23 am ET Earlier this week the House Science Committee approved several bills, including a couple of minor bills with implications for NASA. One bill, HR 426, would authorize $15 million a year from FY2006 through 2010 for NASA to fund “pilot projects that use government and commercial remote sensing capabilities and other sources of geospatial information to address State, local, regional and tribal agency needs.” The other, HR 1022, would support a program for NASA to track near Earth objects (NEOs) as small as 100 meters in diameter (current tracking efforts are focused on objects one kilometer or larger), authorizing $20 million in FY06 and 07. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), the sponsor of HR 1022: “This bill would direct NASA to expand their current program to track and detect potential threats and would provide a funding authorization. Any threat that would wreak havoc on or world should be studied and prevented if possible. We have the technology, we need the direction—this bill provides that.”
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