Lukewarm Review of Roadmaps by NRC/SSB
NRC Space Studies Board Report: Review of Goals and Plans for NASA’s Space and Earth Sciences
“The main sources of gaps and potential missed opportunities in some roadmaps are a shortage of scientific justification for their stated goals and an overly narrow interpretation of the presidential vision by the NASA roadmap teams.”
Editor’s note: With regard to “The Robotic and Human Exploration of Mars” roadmap, the SSB said: “The roadmap’s strengths are its early recognition of broad scientific goals and consideration of preparations for human exploration, and strategies for growing the next generation of Mars scientists. Its major weakness is the lack of the broader scientific goals and objectives as motivation for the specific recommended mission elements of the roadmap, which focus on putting humans on Mars. The roadmap’s presentation of the goal of placing humans on Mars appears without scientific justification.” … “Identification of the scientific need and value of humans in future Mars exploration is conspicuously absent from the roadmap”… “In general, real description of prioritized goals, observations and measurements within the broad science context has been sacrificed in order to address the human exploration goals.”
–Science in NASA’s Vision for Space Exploration, NRC (PDF)
– NASA Roadmap for the Robotic and Human Exploration of Mars
– NASA Solar System Exploration Strategic Roadmap
– NASA Strategic Roadmap: The Search for Earth-like Planets
– NASA Strategic Roadmap: Sun – Solar System Connection
– NASA Earth Science and Applications from Space Strategic Roadmap: Exploring our Planet for the Benefit of Society
– NASA Science Strategic Roadmap: Universe Exploration: From the Big Bang to Life
