NASA wants to have astronauts back on the moon by 2020, and this expensive effort is in addition to everything else the agency has on its plate. A debate is raging over NASA’s priorities as the agency strains under a lack of budgetary resources and must balance the cost of its human exploration plans with its many unmanned research missions.

NASA’s fiscal year 2008 budget request is $17.3 billion. The Science Mission Directorate, which oversees Earth observing satellites, space telescopes and planetary missions, is slated to receive about $5.5 billion of this total, an increase of $49.3 million over its 2007 request. This budget “will enable NASA to launch or partner on 10 new missions, operate and provide ground support for more than 50 spacecraft, and fund a wide array of scientific research related to and based on the data returned from these missions,” Alan Stern, the associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, testified in May before the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics.

But many agency observers believe the agency’s new focus and budget approach is shortchanging many important missions. “All of NASA’s programs are currently inadequately funded, and all have a role to play in the national priorities,” Lennard Fisk, professor of space science at the University of Michigan and chairman of the National Research Council Space Studies Board, said at the same May hearing. Fisk also emphasized the need for a new initiative “to pursue a vigorous Earth science program.”

A report from The National Research Council also finds the state of NASA’s budget disturbing. “The United States’ extraordinary foundation of global observations is at great risk,” according to a pre-publication copy of “Earth Science and Applications from Space: National Imperatives for the Next Decade and Beyond,” a collaboration of the Space Studies Board and the division on Engineering and Physical Sciences. “Between 2006 and the end of the decade, the number of operating missions will decrease dramatically, and the number of operating sensors and instruments on NASA spacecraft, most of which are well past their nominal lifetimes, will decrease by some 40 percent.”

According to John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, much is missing from NASA’s science program despite an impressive lineup of 52 operational spacecraft and 41 missions scheduled to be launched throughout the next seven years. “Almost all of these future missions are in development stage and have adequate budget resources — if they do not encounter major cost overruns. But these are missions that have been approved,” says Logsdon, who adds there is no growth planned in NASA’s science budget in the next four years. “So the ambitious and smaller missions that had been advocated by the space science community are not likely to be funded.”

These budget concerns are threatening the long-term leadership that the United States has enjoyed in the space research arena, says the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “As of 2005, it was still the case that 60 to 70 percent of the Earth-observation data flowing from space was coming from U.S. satellites and instruments, contributing significantly to U.S. preeminence in atmospheric, oceanic and terrestrial Earth science. Of course, partnerships and outsourcing are playing a role in this field as in many others, but partnerships and purchase of foreign data by U.S. users are themselves constrained by declining budgets and currently fall far short of U.S. needs,” the association declared in an open letter, “The Crisis in Earth Observation from Space,” in April.

The problem is that NASA is being asked to do more than either the White House or Congress are willing to pay for, says Logsdon. “That is the primary source of the tension. NASA is no longer planning robotic precursor missions beyond the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, for example, and NASA hopes to partner with other countries as they launch robotic lunar missions. Also, there is simply not enough money for a robust advanced technology program,” he says. “This in my view is a shortsighted limit, putting longer-term exploration activities at risk. Again, the problem comes back to inadequate financial resources.”

The chorus of concerns is being heard by some in Congress. According to House Science and Technology Committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.), NASA has demonstrated that it is capable of undertaking an ambitious science program, and Congress has certainly embraced NASA’s science activities, seeing them as highly productive and worth the investment of taxpayer dollars. “However, I am concerned that we are already seeing stresses in that program as a result of the agency’s planned cuts to its outyear budgets for science, e.g., no money for any of the new Earth observations missions recommended by the National Academies in their Decadal Survey, cutbacks in the numbers and frequency of Explorer and Earth Systems Science Pathfinder missions, cuts to the research and analysis budget that helps fund university-based research, and cuts to the long-lead technology development programs that enable new missions,” says Gordon.

“Ideally, the human and robotic parts of NASA’s program can and should coexist,” says Gordon. “To a large extent, they are focused on different goals. To the extent they overlap, NASA’s science programs help enable human exploration and in turn NASA’s human space activities can help enable science — as the servicing missions to the Hubble space telescope have demonstrated. The challenge is in ensuring that adequate resources are made available to both endeavors. Otherwise there is the real risk that one or the other — or perhaps both — will be disadvantaged.”

In February, the Congressional Budget Office concluded that a five-year extension in NASA’s manned Constellation Program — delaying the first manned lunar mission to 2025 — would yield a savings in outlays of “$1 billion in 2008 and would total about $16 billion through 2012.” Pursuing this option would also grant NASA additional time, “to consider different approaches to conducting human lunar missions.”

But according to a top U.S. lunar researcher, “It is entirely unrealistic to plan any return of humans to the Moon without precursor robotic lander missions (beyond the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter). After all, that is what was done with Apollo,” says the researcher, who did not wish to be identified. NASA Administrator Michael “Griffin has been given a great task with the Vision for Space Exploration which was first announced by President Bush in January 2004, but (it is) not really feasible or viable with the present budget. He is doing the very best he can, but has his hands tied for lack of funds.”

NASA realizes it faces budget constraints, but the agency does not see the same problems as many observers. “Science and exploration go hand-in-hand,” says Grey Hautaluoma, an agency spokesman. “In space, it’s difficult to separate them. NASA is working with a variety of science communities to identify science opportunities for the early human lunar missions. Since NASA intends to carry out high priority science, these new capabilities can only increase the amount and quality of the science that NASA can carry out within its science program.”

As for other missions, Earth science receives $1.5 billion annually, or more than 25 percent of the agency’s science portfolio, according Hautaluoma. NASA has seven Earth science missions in formulation or development, including the Global Precipitation Measurement mission, the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM), the Ocean Surface Topography Mission and the Orbiting Carbon Observatory. “There are many missions we would like to undertake,” he says. “The realities of a flat budget and the fiscal realities of the overall federal budget require difficult decisions to be made when prioritizing future missions.”

Companies Supporting NASA

While the debate on NASA’s non-human spaceflight budget remains heated, companies will find benefits from the funding the agency devotes to scientific spacecraft. Many of those companies say the benefits come not just from the money provided by NASA for a particular mission but from taking experience and technology developed while working on those missions and applying it to commercial efforts.

Ball Aerospace has supplied instruments to NASA for the Hubble Space Telescope and is supplying the primary mirror system for the James Webb Space Telescope. “We have benefited from our work for [the Science Mission Directorate] by developing technology and methods that we have transitioned successfully to other aspects of our business,” says Brian Holz, senior advanced systems manager for Colorado-based Ball Aerospace’s Operational Space. “We are developing enabling technology for many of NASA’s key science missions. You have a choice — push the science farther along with fewer missions with significant technology developments and the corresponding uncertainty in the costs when you start the project or take smaller steps with higher budget certainty. The government appears to be moving to the latter,” he says. “With the advent of the Exploration Initiative, the rate of growth of the science budget has reduced, which may result in a minor impact on new program starts going forward.”

General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems often finds synergies between its NASA work and commercial projects, says David Shingledecker, the company’s vice president and general manager. In mid-May, the unit was awarded an LDCM spacecraft accommodation study contract by NASA’s Rapid Spacecraft Development Office involving spacecraft design, performance and instrument requirements. “NASA’s LDCM is a natural extension to our space imaging work on GeoEye-1 [for commercial imagery satellite operator GeoEye], which will provide the highest resolution of any commercial Earth-imaging to date. Both GeoEye-1 and LDCM require long mission lives and robust designs, thus our commercial work supports our NASA programs,” he says.

NASA’s Swift mission — a gamma-ray burst observatory that began its two-year mission in late 2004 — is another example of NASA experience supporting commercial programs, because the technical requirements of the attitude control system on Swift are applicable to GeoEye-1, says Shingledecker. “Close collaboration with NASA is important (because) NASA science projects often have unique technical requirements not found on commercial programs,” he says. “For instance, Swift has to autonomously slew to view gamma-ray bursts within tens of seconds without pointing its telescopes at the sun, moon or Earth to avoid damaging them.”

The rapid pace of new mission development plus the use of terrestrial technologies is closing the performance gap between large and small satellites, says Phil Davies, European business manager at U.K.-based Surrey Satellite Technologies Ltd., which specializes in smaller satellite platforms. The improving capabilities of small satellites is having a major impact on the commercial marketplace, as business cases for Earth observation constellations now becoming viable through the use of small satellite technologies. “The five-satellite Rapid Eye constellation to be launched later this year is a good example,” he says. “Constellations give major advantages — principally better timeliness of the data through a physical spreading of the sensors around the Earth, much better resilience to failures and much more straightforward system replenishment.

Surrey Satellite is part of NASA’s Rapid Spacecraft Acquisition Contract, which supports NASA’s space science, Earth science and technology needs, and the company hopes to supply platforms to nations wishing to pursue low-cost lunar missions. Davies is a strong support of international collaboration to overcome budget problems. “If space exploration is too costly and too slow, the public will not back it and politicians will consequently cancel programs,” says Davies. “Thus, the space industry must offer a rapidly paced program which delivers results in short time frames at affordable prices. … International collaboration introduces extra flexibility into how missions are put together. Nations funding these missions generally get better value for their money.”

The blueprints for manned spaceflight and lunar exploration in the next decade are ready, but the plans may be influenced greatly by how these budget challenges are resolved throughout the next several years.