Space Science Update

NASA’s Science Programs Threatened by Missions to Put Humans in Space, Newhouse News Service

“NASA’s science programs, the impetus for profound discoveries about the nature of our universe and the restless planet we call home, are in deep trouble. With marching orders from President Bush to reach the moon and Mars, and with spiraling costs to keep the aging shuttle fleet flying and to finish the International Space Station, NASA administrator Mike Griffin is doing what he vowed last fall would not happen. The space agency is making sharp and long-lasting cuts in its science budgets in order to pay for human spaceflight projects.”

NASA’s Reverse Thrust, Scientific American

“The NASA budget announced in February mows down a scarily long list of science missions, from a Europa orbiter to a space-based gravitational-wave observatory. Research grants to individual scientists, traditionally kept safe from high-level budget machinations, have taken a 15 percent hit, retroactive to last fall; hundreds have already received “termination letters” canceling their projects.”