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From The Planetary Report:

Don't Abandon Science at NASA

by Charles F. Kennel

Click to enlarge > Pillar-like Structures in Eagle Nebula For more than a decade, this iconic image from the Eagle Nebula has represented the power of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to capture the awesome beauty of our universe in images so spectacular that they qualify as works of art. These ethereal, pillar-like structures -- reminiscent of undersea coral -- are actually columns of cool, interstellar hydrogen gas and dust in which new stars are born. This image was taken in April 1995 with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Credit: NASA / ESA / Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) / J. Hester and P. Scowen

The achievements of NASA are all around us—satellites that monitor our weather and probe our oceans, detailed images of Mars’ surface, views of deep space from our space telescopes. Now, with growing urgency to replace the space shuttle, science funding at NASA is in peril.

In the July/August 2006 issue of The Planetary Report, Charles Kennel, director of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, stresses that we need to commit to a strong science program at NASA to better know our own planet and its place in the cosmos.

When NASA was launched nearly half a century ago, the chill of the Cold War was palpable.

NASA’s founding in 1958 rallied the country around a science and engineering effort that would supplant a fear of Soviet domination with a new vision of the role of science and education in American life. Neil Armstrong’s giant leap for humankind 11 years later climaxed the history-altering race to the Moon. It also launched the idea that nearly anything was possible out in the great expanse of space. Certainly no space initiative since has inspired the patriotism of the lunar landings, nor has any other space-based objective motivated such a revitalization of science and education.

By now, NASA and its achievements are woven intricately into our lives. Today’s children cannot remember a time without satellites or when the name NASA wasn’t instantly recognizable. Even the most challenging space successes are taken for granted, and we forget where many things in our daily lives came from. Want to know whether to take an umbrella to work? Need directions to a new restaurant? Have a favorite program on satellite TV? Be thankful for NASA’s achievements in satellite technology, which make possible today’s weather reports, mapping technology, and television broadcasting.

NASA science has become part of everyday life but also provides extraordinary events. Millions of people around the world shared the excitement of scientific
exploration on the Internet by watching the nearly lifelike images of the Mars Exploration Rovers. The Hubble Space Telescope sent back images that became works of art. The never-ending quest for knowledge about stars, galaxies, other planets, and especially Earth is one of the hallmarks of contemporary culture.

Click to enlarge > Crescent Earth and Moon This picture of a crescent-shaped Earth and Moon -- the first of its kind ever taken by a spacecraft -- was recorded Sept. 18, 1977, by Voyager 1 when it was 11.66 million kilometers (7.25 million miles) from Earth. Credit: NASA / JPL

Science is at the very heart of NASA’s long-term success; thus, it is troubling to hear of the serious problems embodied in the agency’s budget. A long-brewing issue that many have seen coming has finally come to a crisis: the need to replace the space shuttle with new and improved heavy-lift vehicles. At the pace currently planned, such an endeavor could consume the entire NASA budget. Although this unavoidable effort to
replace an outmoded transport system is a necessary component of the agency’s future, it would be tragic if it came at the expense of scientific research programs.

As the director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego for the past nine years, I have seen the extraordinary value that scientific initiatives hold for the future of Earth. Satellites, by measuring tiny increases in the sea level, have produced the first complete map of features on the ocean bottom thousands of meters below the surface. Today’s missions, such as NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiments and the Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite, probe the state of the planet and help reveal a wealth of information about how the oceans, ice sheets, atmosphere, and land are interacting and changing over time. Such knowledge can help us further understand the complexities of the climate system and how important changes—from El Niño events to global warming—are affecting the environment and potentially changing our daily lives now and for future generations.

Earth science has shown us that in the past 50 years, human beings have transformed the surface of Earth as never before. In the coming half century, these impacts will become more acute, as the United Nations predicts a global population of some 10 billion people on Earth using about eight times the energy currently consumed. An increased demand on resources such as energy and fresh water inevitably will lead to increased demands for scientific solutions. The science of Earth is needed as never before.

It is just as vital to keep efforts alive that seek answers about the possibility of life on other planetary bodies. We need to bring samples back to Earth from Mars. We need to search for life in the water under the ice of Jupiter’s moon Europa. We need to look for planetary systems around other stars in search of a small Earth-like abode for life. We need to understand how stars, galaxies, and our whole universe formed and are evolving. We need to understand where we came from and where we are going.

When the next astronauts land on the Moon, the Internet will take us there with them. Exploration will be up close and personal. But the Moon, a very interesting geological laboratory, has no life.

One can hope that people around the world will continue to ask the biggest question of them all: how life arose on Earth and might develop elsewhere. Thanks to NASA’s planetary probes, we now know that only one planet in the solar system is hospitable to advanced life—there is no place like home. Perhaps that’s the greatest discovery of all.

Charles Kennel is the ninth director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. He has just completed his second term as chair of the NASA Advisory Council and chairs its science committee.