From the Chair
It is becoming hard to remember a time when the space program was in what might be called a “steady state.” Indeed, it has been in various conditions of uncertainty and flux for well over a decade, arguably ever since the end of the Apollo program. But even so, the transformations now under way are truly profound.
The activities of the Space Studies Board and its committees in 1995 highlight some of the recent changes affecting the content and conduct of space research across its many disciplines. A few reports were commissioned specifically to deal with some significant change or wrenching choice driven primarily by budgetary pressures. Even those others that address more traditional, scientific questions carry clear imprints of current political and fiscal realities.
Completed in September, Managing the Space Sciences reports the results of the year’s most comprehensive study on the conduct of space research. This document, taken together with several short reports on particular questions of science management and an account of an experiment in priority-setting methodology, offers fundamental principles and detailed suggestions on how NASA can best carry out its charter in space science and applications. Responding to congressional and NASA requests, Managing the Space Sciences examines the organization of science management at NASA, provides guidelines for the very difficult process of setting priorities among and across distinct disciplines, and analyzes mechanisms for ensuring the insertion of new technologies (this last component included participation by the National Research Council’s Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board). NASA appears very receptive to the report and its recommendations.
The climate for space research was clearly a factor in several reports dealing with specific research areas or missions. Earth Observations from Space: History, Promise, and Reality is retrospective of the ever changing civil remote sensing program over the past 15 years, spanning NASA, NOAA, and DOD programs and activities. It was written with the hope that future programs would benefit from lessons learned by studying the past. In the report Review of Gravity Probe B, the Board responded to an urgent request for a scientific and technical evaluation of this ongoing project, including an unprecedented assessment of its comparative scientific value. The Role of Small Missions in Planetary and Lunar Exploration is an analysis of how the current trend toward lighter spacecraft meshes with scientific priorities in solar system research. Possible opportunities for scientific use of defense-sponsored space system development are discussed in the Board’s Scientific Assessment of a New Technology Orbital Telescope.
All the Board’s reports must be grounded in basic analysis of research priorities and scientific opportunities best addressed through the space program. In two disciplines, the relatively new area of microgravity research and the more traditional field of space physics, the Board and its committees published new research strategies that lay out
the most important topics for the coming years. A shorter and more narrowly focused report treats the scientific value of Earth observations by the Shuttle Radar Laboratory.
All indications are that the Board’s guidance is used by those policy makers who must finally make the hard decisions about what we should do in space and how we should do it. This is the real reward for the hundreds of scientists who, working with dedicated NRC staff, volunteered their days, evenings, and weekends during 1995 to produce the reports presented in these pages.
Claude R.Canizares
Chair
Space Studies Board
April 1996