National Aeronautics And Space Administration Program Research Articles

Assured Access: A History of the US Air Force Space Launch Enterprise, 1945–2020 by David N. Spires

Reviewed by: Assured Access: A History of the US Air Force Space Launch Enterprise, 1945–2020 by David N. Spires Michael W. Hankins (bio) Assured Access: A History of the US Air Force Space Launch Enterprise, 1945–2020 By David N. Spires. Maxwell Air Force Base: Air University Press, 2022. Pp. 505. The establishment of the United States Space Force in December 2019 initiated a wide public discourse on the militarization of space. What much of that discourse failed to acknowledge was that space had been militarized long before the popular crewed space programs of the 1960s. This history of U.S. Air Force (USAF) involvement in space is the subject of Assured Access, the latest work from David Spires, who has previously published several books documenting the service's activities in the final frontier. Based almost entirely on secondary sources, Assured Access offers little new information but does present a useful single-volume overview of the evolution of USAF space launch capabilities over a broad timespan. Spires traces how the USAF's quest to control the space domain in the years immediately after World War II brought it into sharp rivalry with the U.S. Army and Navy and, later, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Readers who may not be familiar with the level of Defense Department participation in NASA programs—for example, the heavy influence the Air Force had on the space shuttle's design—will find Spires's coverage excellent. The key turning point in Spires's narrative is the 1986 Challenger explosion, in which seven astronauts tragically lost their lives. This event caused the USAF to focus on its own fleet of Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles built by United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing. ULA soon had competition from companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin, as the USAF sought "on demand" launches to lift payloads into orbit with increasingly short timeframes. One of the book's major themes is the USAF's reluctance to make major investments in the space domain. "Air Force leaders were less than enthusiastic about human spaceflight and frequently ambivalent about space in general" (p. 215), Spires says of the space shuttle era. This ambivalence continued into the twenty-first century, as Spires describes how the U.S. Space Force was created largely because Congress became frustrated with "Air Force stewardship of space and what they [Congress] perceived as the secondary role of space in a service dominated by air interests" (p. 350). Spires argues [End Page 629] that events such as the creation of the space shuttle program and the Space Force were powerful motivators in spurring the USAF to action in space and that the service has achieved its goals there. Published by the Air Force, Assured Access has some of the limitations common to institutional histories. Specifically, there is little historical argument present. There is also an almost exclusive focus on hardware, and the text often resorts to lengthy lists of specifications of particular systems. Broader connections to culture and society are mostly unexplored. This is not meant as a criticism: Spires's approach presents a valuable resource for collecting detailed specifications in one volume, and the fact that Air University Press offers the book as a free, searchable PDF adds to its usefulness. What is missing from the book is a clearer explanation of what the Air Force was trying to accomplish in space operationally. Spires frequently describes the purpose of these launches as "classified reconnaissance" missions with no elaboration. In fairness, some of the more recent programs might still be classified. Still, the reader is left with little idea of what all these Air Force satellites were doing and how their missions related to broader Air Force operations. Also, little mention is made of the Soviet and Chinese space efforts, some of which undoubtedly influenced USAF decision-making. These critiques do not detract from the value of Spires's work as a resource for contextualizing the evolution of Air Force space capabilities throughout the Cold War and beyond. Assured Access deserves a place on the shelves, or, as it were, in the browser bookmarks lists, of historians of...

The Way It Was.

Mary Osborn was a native Californian. She was an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley, where she worked in the laboratory of I.L. Chaikoff. She received her PhD at the University of Washington, where her work on the role of folic acid coenzymes in one-carbon metabolism revealed the mechanism of action of methotrexate. After postdoctoral training with Bernard Horecker in the Department of Microbiology at New York University (NYU), she embarked on her research career as a faculty member in the NYU Department of Microbiology and in the Department of Molecular Biology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. In 1968 she moved as one of the founding faculty of the new medical school of the University of Connecticut, where she remained until her retirement in 2014. Her research was focused on the biosynthesis of the endotoxin lipopolysaccharide (LPS) of gram-negative bacteria and on the assembly of the bacterial cell envelope. She made seminal contributions in these areas. She was the recipient of numerous honors and served as president of several important scientific organizations. Later in her career she served as chair of the National Research Council Committee on Space Biology and Medicine, advisory to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which produced an influential report that plotted the path for NASA's space biology research program in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Dr. Osborn died on Jan. 17, 2019.

Advances in planetary defense in the United States

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) recently established an office to manage the Agency's planetary defense-related projects and coordinate activities across multiple U.S. agencies as well as with international efforts to plan appropriate responses to the potential asteroid impact hazard. The creation of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) is a logical and formal step forward with NASA's NEO Observations program which began nearly two decades ago. Since the program's inception in 1998, NASA-funded efforts have discovered more than 98% of the more than 16,000 NEOs currently known.As important as it is to mitigate a potential impact event, the essential first step is to find these near-Earth objects as early as possible. To that end, NASA's PDCO leads national and international efforts to:•detect any potential for significant impact of the Earth by natural objects;•appraise the range of potential effects by any possible object; and•develop strategies to mitigate impact effects on human welfare.Since commencing the program in 1998, NASA has provided funding to upgrade and operate existing 1-m class telescopes to conduct the search for NEOs. Today, NASA funds three primary ground-based survey capabilities: the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) project, the Catalina Sky Survey (CSS), and the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Reporting System (Pan-STARRS). Recent enhancements to NASA's Near-Earth Object (NEO) Observations Program have led to ∼83% increase in the discovery rate of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) over the past three years.These survey efforts are increasingly detecting close encounter events (i.e., <0.001 AU; recent examples include 2012 DA14, 2017 EA, and 2017 GM) and have enabled the prediction of some small object impact events (e.g., 2008 TC3 and 2014 AA). Such encounters provide opportunities for NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) to make spectral measurements; or observation by planetary radars at Arecibo and Goldstone to refine the orbit of the object with great precision and even “image” the small primitive body.Of critical importance is the Minor Planet Center (MPC), where automated systems process observations made by the search teams to determine orbits and what are NEOs. The Center for NEO Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) determines more precise orbits for the objects. Both JPL and the MPC utilize processes and procedures for NEO orbit determination and prediction that are sanctioned and monitored by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and produce data catalogues on small bodies in the Solar System that are utilized world-wide by the astronomical community.The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) was reactivated for the purpose detecting NEOs and will continue to operate well into 2018. It is in Sun-synchronous, near-polar inclination (97.5°) orbit around the Earth. The NEOWISE project uses WISE in ‘warm mode’ (at 3.4 and 4.6 μm), and in conjunction with ground-based follow-up, this unique dataset has set limits on population statistics, orbital parameters, approximate sizes, and initial compositional knowledge of the asteroid population.Further follow-up observations with visible and infrared telescopes (e.g., NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility, Spitzer Space Telescope, other NASA-funded NEO observer teams) refine the astrometric positions of an NEO, photometric observations obtain detailed light curve information [thereby constraining NEO shapes and spin state], and collect albedo and spectral data on basic physical properties and mineralogy.Planetary defense demonstration missions also fall within the purview of the PDCO. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission is directed by NASA to the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL). The target is the binary near-Earth asteroid (65803) Didymos, which consists of a primary body ∼800 m across, and a secondary body (or “moonlet”) whose 150-m size is more typical of the size of asteroids that could pose a more common hazard to Earth.However, the first step in planetary defense is the overarching goal to complete the NEO survey down to a 100 m-sized objects. The asteroid hunter mission – NEOCam – is a single scientific instrument: 0.5-m aperture infrared telescope that would survey the solar system for NEOs from Sun-Earth L1 Lagrange point (SEL1). NEOCam is also in an extended Phase A study under the auspices of NASA's PDCO.

Jack B. Hartung (March 10, 1937–August 28, 2015)

Jack B. Hartung (March 10, 1937–August 28, 2015)

Waste and duplication in NASA programs: The need to enhance U.S. space program efficiency

The U.S. Government faces acute budgetary deficits and national debt problems in the Obama Administration's second term. These problems have been brought about by decades of unsustainable government spending affecting all federal agencies including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). An outgrowth of this fiscal profligacy is the presence of wasteful and duplicative programs within NASA that prevent this agency from achieving its space science and human spaceflight objectives. These programs occur due to mismanagement of these programs by NASA and from the creation of these programs by the U.S. Congress and congressional committees. This occurs because congressional appropriators tend to be more concerned with economically enhancing their states and districts and promoting their reelections instead of providing effectively targeted funding and oversight of their programs to ensure they meet national space policy goals and provide tangible value for taxpayers. This work will examine recent examples of wasteful and duplicative NASA programs and suggest ways to improve their utility.

Factors which Limit the Value of Additional Redundancy in Human Rated Launch Vehicle Systems

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has embarked on an ambitious program to return humans to the moon and beyond. As NASA moves forward in the development and design of new launch vehicles for future space exploration, it must fully consider the implications that rule-based requirements for redundancy or fault tolerance have on system reliability/risk. These considerations include common cause failure, increased system complexity, combined serial and parallel configurations, and the impact of design features implemented to control premature activation. These factors and others must be considered in trade studies to support design decisions that balance safety, reliability, performance and system complexity to achieve a relatively simple, operable system that provides the safest and most reliable system within the specified performance requirements. This paper describes conditions under which additional functional redundancy can impede improved system reliability. Examples from current NASA programs including the Ares I Upper Stage will be shown.

The Right Stuff: Veterans Affairs National Surgical Quality Improvement Project

Robert S. Lagasse, MD*† The 1983 movie, The Right Stuff, was an adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s book by the same name that chronicled the Project Mercury astronauts selected by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Project Mercury began in 1959 and was the first manned space flight program in the United States (US). At that time, the Soviet Union was clearly leading the way in rocket technology and the US was not “measuring up.” The political mandate of competing against the Soviet Union in the “space race” seemed doomed to failure given the expense of such an endeavor and our obvious technology deficits. The first human space flight occurred on April 12, 1961, when cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth aboard a Soviet spacecraft. Fortunately, a determined group of astronauts, dubbed the Mercury Seven, brought the “right stuff” to the NASA program and the United States became the second nation to achieve manned space flight with the suborbital flight of astronaut Alan Shepard on May 5, 1961. Less than 1 yr later, the first US orbital flight was achieved by John Glenn, and established the US as a true competitor in space. As of this year, human spaceflight missions have been conducted by the Soviet Union, the US, Russia, the People’s Republic of China, and by a private US space flight company. I mention this brief history of the early years of the Project Mercury space program because I believe there are many parallels between the NASA quest for manned space flight and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) quest for quality perioperative care as described by Bishop et al. in this issue of Anesthesia & Analgesia. During the mid-to-late 1980s, the VA came under a great deal of public scrutiny over the quality of surgical care in their 133 hospitals. At issue were the operative mortality rates in the VA hospitals and the perception in Congress that the VA was not measuring up to the private sector. To address the gap, Congress mandated the VA to report risk-adjusted surgical outcomes annually, and compare their outcomes to national averages. Unfortunately, perioperative performance measurement technology had not advanced to the point where there were risk-adjusted national averages. Still, the VA was able to exhibit the right stuff and develop the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP) that includes risk adjustment models for 30-day morbidity and mortality after major surgery in 8 surgical subspecialties and for all operations combined. Preoperative patient characteristics used in these models include demographics, symptoms, physical findings, comorbidities unrelated to the reason for surgery, preoperative laboratory values, and ASA physical status which, with all of its strengths and weaknesses, is a major predictive factor. But, this modeling did not come without a price. The cost of data collection and analysis has been quoted at approximately $38 per case. The VA database is expanding by approximately 100,000 cases annually and currently has more than 1 million cases. Thus, the cost to date has been more than $38 million, yet private sector hospitals are still lining up to participate as they expand this project beyond the VA hospitals under the auspices of the American College of Surgeons (ACS). In ACS NSQIP, each hospital From the *Department of Anesthesiology, Montefiore Medical Center, Bronx, New York; and †The Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York. Accepted for publication July 24, 2008. Reprints will not be available from the author. Address correspondence to Robert S. Lagasse, MD, Department of Anesthesiology, Weiler Division of Montefiore Medical Center, 1825 Eastchester Rd., Bronx, NY 10461. Address e-mail to boblagasse@yahoo.com. Copyright © 2008 International Anesthesia Research Society DOI: 10.1213/ane.0b013e31818af90a

NASA: Back to Eating Seed Corn

S ince the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and its problems last appeared on this page, new administrator Michael Griffin has had about 6 months to deal with his budget problems, one of the largest of which is funding the space shuttle program. Operating the shuttle for the next 5 years could cost $5 billion more than NASA had projected. Just to remind you, there was some hope in April that President Bush's Vision for Space Exploration (VSE, or Moon-to-Mars) would neither cripple basic science programs nor signal the end of a number of planned robotic space missions. Alas, there has been even more damage to both than Science expected. That would be enough bad news, but there's more to the story and it is an international problem, not just a domestic one. Present concerns at NASA have gone beyond sorrow over the lost robotic missions. Instead, they now focus on the necessary preparations for the VSE mission itself. People are going to fly to the Moon, establish a base, and use the experience gained from getting and living there to send humans on the longest trip in history. Let's ponder the work that has to be done first. The International Space Station (ISS) has a limited crew (two or three instead of seven), and shuttle flights (of which NASA may only be able to afford eight) are arbitrarily scheduled to end at the end of this decade to meet the recommendations of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. Some hope for a complete ISS soon after that, but doubts remain. Remember that ISS is an international project, billed to serve as a science laboratory for non-U.S. users. Russia helped build it and is using it. The European Space Agency and Japan have produced major components of the station, on the promise that they will get to work there. But important modules such as the Centrifuge Accommodation Module constructed by the Japanese will not be launched. The international space science community is dismayed at the bait-and-switch appearance of the situation. ![Figure][1] CREDIT: TIM SMITH Because the Moon mission comes first, research in support of the long Mars mission is being eliminated or “deferred.” Basic science and technology programs, including physiology and life support, robotics, and information systems, have been “descoped”: that's NASA-speak for dropped. Worse still, NASA's life science program has been relegated to a corner in an exploration office that is more concerned with rockets than with cutting-edge research. How did all this come about? Charles Oman, the director of the Man Vehicle Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), was chair of NASA's Space Station Utilization Advisory Committee and was a member of its Biological and Physical Research Advisory Committee. When the president announced VSE, the latter group was assured by an associate administrator that basic research would be continued because it would be essential to the vision. Well, Oman's committee has been disbanded, and the associate administrator who gave the assurances has been reassigned. Oman adds that “all the NASA Advisory Council subcommittees that spoke to the value of basic research are gone.” What is likely to be the fate of science in this new vision for space exploration? Even if NASA finds the money and the will to do the research needed to protect the human travelers, the agency's history offers little reason for confidence. Larry Young, MIT bioengineer, longtime NASA adviser, and one-time payload specialist astronaut in training, has this to say about those prospects: “NASA always uses research as justification for its large manned missions, but once they are under way the engineering, political, and fiscal factors take over and the science constituency is often cast aside.” We can hope that VSE will come to represent the triumph of hope over experience. But will the basic and applied science be done beforehand that is necessary to keep the explorers safe and healthy, or will these professionals seem more like participants in another extreme sport? There are promises that some of these programs will be restarted after the Moon piece of VSE is done, but then the scientists will be someplace else, and NASA will need years to grow some more seed corn. Griffin should consider some fixes: First, restore NASA's Advisory Council to its full membership; second, ask it to conduct a thorough study of which life sciences efforts are essential to the new vision; and finally, rescue the life scientists and bring them back to the science office. [1]: pending:yes

Agate Outcomes Analysis: Using the Foundation for SATS

This study explored the policy implications of a specific jointly funded government-industry-academic research and development initiative on future planning. The researcher sought to uncover what trends or patterns of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Advanced General Aviation Transport Experiments (AGATE) had a positive affect on the outcomes of the consortium. By identifying these trends, the research may be able to help foster a more practical transition to follow-on programs. AGATE focused on developing innovative cockpit technologies that highlighted safety, affordability, and ease-of-use based in such areas as flight systems and integrated design and manufacturing. A quantitative analytic methodological approach encompassing qualitative data analysis software and the policy research construct was applied to analyze the organizational policy trends through the application of lessons learned from the AGATE program with reference to the current NASA program-the Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS). Both NASA programs consist of a similar participant pool. By examining the effects of recommendations from previous studies, this analysis illustrated the transitional effects identified through the analysis. This planning framework illustrated the evolution of program and goal structure and the catalytic effect on the aviation industry and product development through increased interaction.

Telemedicine at the top of the world: the 1998 and 1999 Everest extreme expeditions.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) initially established a Commercial Space Center (CSC) in the Department of Surgery at Yale University School of Medicine to further develop and evaluate technologies in information systems, telecommunications applied to medicine, and physiologic sensors. The CSC is known as the Medical Informatics and Technology Applications Consortium (MITAC). The overall purpose for this NASA program is to leverage technology, innovation, and resources from industry and academia through collaborative partnerships. The Yale-NASA CSC/MITAC organized the Everest Extreme Expeditions (E3) for the spring Himalayan climbing seasons in the years 1998 and 1999. The primary mission was to deliver advanced medical support with global telemedicine capabilities to one of the world's most remote and hostile settings--Mount Everest. The purpose was both humanitarian (providing medical support) and scientific (conducting medical and technology research). The Yale team provided medical care for the Everest Base Camp community; conducted validation experiments for several types of advanced medical technologies in this remote, hostile environment; and performed real-time monitoring of selected climbers, while also assessing the basic science of altitude physiology. Additionally, the teams conducted outreach medical care to the citizens of Nepal and provided several educational forums for a variety of medical and nonmedical personnel--including school-age children. As part of the project's mission, the E3 medical teams at both Nepal and New Haven were on a 24-hour emergency call system to deliver medical care in the event of a crisis. Unlike most of the teams at Everest, the mission of E3 was not to climb the 29,028-foot mountain the Nepalese call Sagarmatha ("Sky Head"). The mountain served as an extreme testing ground for telemedicine. The lessons learned from this testbed are reviewed here and further clarify the abilities to provide better health care in remote and extreme environments--which for some may even be their home environment during/after a medical illness.

Administrative Entrepreneurship and Space Technology: The Ups and Downs of "Mission to Planet Earth"

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an agency seeking to pour new wine into old bottles as the post-cold War era evolves. NASA is as close to a pure agency as exists in the U.S. federal government. It conducts and supports research and development (R&D) at the frontier of knowledge. Its work is most visibly associated with missions from earth, such as manned space launches and planetary science missions. Yet it is now the locus of a major new program attuned to the global environment called Mission to Planet Earth (MTPE). A study of MTPE gives insights into the difficulties government organizations face in seeking change, and how new large-scale technologies are shaped by the political/policy process. It points up the role of administrative leaders in charting a course for new technology and how their strategies succeed and fail. There is great interest in the subject of administrative entrepreneurship and innovation (Doig and Hargrove, 1987).(2) There is also interest in administrative constraints, barriers that are part of democracy's checks and balances on bureaucracy and the technologies it promotes (Wilson, 1991). NASA's Mission to Planet Earth illuminates well the politics of emergent technology in the contemporary era. It reveals how administrative entrepreneurs build political support for their technologies, and the factors that constrain them in keeping that support over time. Mission to Planet Earth Proclaimed under another name in 1982, MTPE is a NASA program to develop a sequence of ever-more sophisticated satellites to monitor the ills of the planet. The first MTPE satellite is presently monitoring the ozone depletion problem. Future satellites will probe the ocean dynamics and investigate climate change. The centerpiece of MTPE and by far the dominant element in the program is the Earth Observation System (EOS). EOS is now configured as a group of satellites, flying in formation, providing a relatively comprehensive and simultaneous view of land, sea, atmosphere interactions. This system includes a computer-based element on the ground to collect and disseminate information. EOS is critical to the vision of MTPE, and MTPE is integral to a broader national and international research program called Global Change. It is viewed as essential to answering many policy questions in this area. The cost of the full program is uncertain because much of it lies ahead. One can envision a routine system of environmental monitoring in the 21st century. The problem is not the long-term future but the immediate present. Getting to the future takes money, organizational commitment, and agreement from many parties. The future can be delayed a very long time. EOS is in development, and launch of the first elements would not take place until near the end of this century. The present projection is that EOS will cost $8 billion for development between 1992 and 2000, with additional expenditures in the early 21st century. Although substantial, $8 billion is much less than the $17 billion projected for the same period just a brief time ago. That such a great change could occur so quickly is indicative of the uncertain political environment of contemporary technology policy. The Political Construction of Technology Virtually everyone welcomes the use of space technology for global environmental problems. The debate is over not whether, but what should constitute MTPE, and who should make the necessary determinations. NASA is the government entrepreneur, but only one actor among a number influencing the course of the In understanding what has happened and why, it is useful to build on a growing body of knowledge called 'social construction of technology. This is primarily the work of sociologists and historians, and it is a counter to earlier literature that spoke of technology being out of control or having a life of its own (Bijker et al. …

Status of the NASA balloon program

The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Balloon Program has been highly successful since recovering from the catastrophic balloon failure problems of the early to mid 1980s. Balloons have continued to perform at unprecedented success rates. The comprehensive research and development (R&D) effort has continued with advances being made across the spectrum of balloon related disciplines. The long duration balloon project will be transitioning from a development effort to an operational capability this year. Recently, emphasis has been placed on the development and implementation of new support systems and facilities. A new permanent launch facility at Fort Sumner, New Mexico has been established. New ground station support equipment is being implemented, and a new heavy load launch vehicle is scheduled to be implemented in 1992. The progress, status and future plans for these and other aspects of the NASA program will be presented.

Status of the NASA Balloon Program

In the early 1980's the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Balloon Program was faced with a problem of catastrophic balloon failures. In 1986 a balloon recovery program was initiated. This program included qualification of new balloon films, and investigations into materials, processing, structures and performance of balloons. This recovery program has been very successful. To date, more than 100 balloons manufactured of newly developed films have been flown with unprecedented success. There has been much progress made across the spectrum of balloon related disciplines. A new design philosophy has been developed and is being used for all NASA balloons. An updated balloon reliability and quality assurance program is in effect. The long duration balloon development project has been initiated with the first flight test having been conducted in December 1989 from Antarctica. A comprehensive research and development (R&D) effort has been initiated and is progressing well. The progress, status and future plans for these and other aspects of the NASA program, along with a description of the comprehensive balloon R&D activity, will be presented.

The AI program at the National Aeronautics & Space Administration: lessons learned during the first seven years

This article is a slightly modified version of an invited address that was given at the Eighth IEEE Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Applications in Monterey, California, on 2 March 1992. It describes the lessons learned in developing and implementing the Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Program at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). In so doing, the article provides a historical perspective of the program in terms of the stages it went through as it matured. These stages are similar to the ages of artificial intelligence that Pat Winston described a year before the NASA program was initiated. The final section of the article attempts to generalize some of the lessons learned during the first seven years of the NASA AI program into AI program management heuristics.

NASA support for solar physics research in FY 1988

The Solar Physics Branch of the newly formed Space Physics Division in the Office of Space Science and Applications of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Headquarters has an ongoing program of Supporting Research and Technology (SR&amp;T) to encourage basic research in solar physics relevant to NASA's flight programs. Grants and contracts are issued to universities, industry, nonprofit institutions, NASA centers, and other government agencies for this purpose. We emphasize that the rationale for funding meritorious, unsolicited research proposals received by NASA is to provide support for its flight missions. The objectives of these space missions are the study of solar phenomena in a comprehensive manner across a variety of solar regimes, starting at the Sun's core, where energy is generated, and extending out through the solar corona , where the solar wind is formed.

Remote sensing technologies for space missions in the second half of the nineties' decade

The future missions of the National Aeronautics and Space administration (NASA) directed at solar system exploration, astrophysical, planetary and Earth Sciences observations will require advanced capabilities for acquiring data from space platforms. For example, NASA's terrestrial observation program is confronted by a range of challenging and important new problems derived from advances in the Earth Sciences over the past twenty years. New observational approaches appear promising for solving older problems which will benefit meteorology, agriculture, mineralogy, and geodynamics. Furthermore, many of the problems which space observations may help to solve are inherently interdisciplinary of the above areas. Although much is known about the Earth, the unifying concepts are still to be established and remote sensing from space will continue to be a vital experimental tool.

The SPAN/DSUWG Meeting report

On May 8–9, 1986, the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) in Greenbelt, Md., hosted the spring meeting of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Data Systems Users Working Group (DSUWG). Most of the attention of the plenary sessions focused on the Space Physics Analysis Network (SPAN) move to a new configuration in summer 1986 (see sidebar), which builds upon NASA's Program Support Communication Network (PSCN). DSUWG considered the new SPAN project management plan and also heard presentations concerning several other scientific and academic computer networks to which SPAN will be connected.As discussed in the accompanying article concerning SPAN, the network is moving toward a new configuration. Dave Peters (Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), Huntsville, Ala.) discussed SPAN's use of and relationship to the PSCN. As part of its deliberations, DSUWG approved the new SPAN physical configuration and the new SPAN management plan.

International cooperation in planetary exploration: Past success and future prospects

A review is given of the ways in which the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has participated in international efforts to explore the solar system. Past examples of successful international cooperative programs are described. Prospects for future cooperative efforts are discussed with emphasis placed on current events, issues, and trends which are likely to affect possibilities for cooperation over the next 5 to 10 years. Key factors which will play a major role in shaping future prospects for cooperation include the move towards balancing the budget in the United States and the impact of the Challenger accident on the NASA program.

Status of the NASA continuing investigation of catastrophic balloon failures

Since the beginning of the 1980's, the USA National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Balloon Program has been besieged with a continuing problem of catastrophic balloon failures. In 1983 NASA conducted an investigation to identify possible causes for the failures and to determine the necessary corrective action(s) to prevent further occurrence of the problem. The investigation indicated the most probable cause of the failures was the balloon material. Subsequent corrective action(s) were taken to eliminate the problem by establishing a material acceptance criteria for balloon film. Although improvements have been noted in certain classes of balloons, the problem of catastrophic balloon failures continues. Efforts continue, to determine the cause(s) of the diminished performance of current balloons, including investigation of the microstructure of present and past balloon film, stress effects and simplified stress modeling including shape studies, and the equipment and procedures used in the manufacture of balloons. Most recently, a special team of experts has been assembled to aid in the investigation of the failure problems and the methods needed for a solution. The findings and status of the continuing investigation along with the future plans for the NASA program are presented.

Reflections on an AGU Congressional Science Fellowship

In spring 1983, prior to my fellowship year, I was finishing my National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)—sponsored doctoral dissertation in hydrology at the University of Maryland. Currently, I am involved in the final budget deliberations for our nation's 1987 civilian space program in the Executive Office of the President (EOP). With this transformation in mind, I think it is fair to say that my 1983–1984 AGU Congressional Science Fellowship has had a tremendous influence on my career.During my fellowship in Congress, I worked with Rep. George E. Brown (D‐Calif.) on water, remote sensing, space, and general science budgets and issues. I was involved in several pieces of legislation that are currently being implemented. It was through my responsibility for analysis of NASA programs and budget that I began to understand the complexity of the budget process and the development of our nation's civilian space policy. I found it very satisfying to learn about space programs beyond my own field of satellite‐based hydrology.