NASA science budget choices criticized

Abstract

NASA's decision to focus its science efforts on large missions at the expense of smaller missions and research is misguided and will have a long‐term negative impact on attracting and retaining scientists and engineers to NASA‐related science, several scientists testified at a 2 March hearing.Witnesses at the hearing before the U.S. House of Representatives Science Committee included NASA Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate Mary Cleave and members or chairs of four U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) decadal surveys of various aspects of NASA science. The witnesses discussed cuts and delays to NASA projects proposed in the agency's Fiscal Year 2007 budget request. NASAs science budget would grow by 1.5 percent in FY2007,and then by just one percent per year in 2008–2011 (see Eos 87(9),2006).