A panel of space scientists has given NASA low grades on an ambitious 10-year plan to study the sun and its impact on Earth. A new report* from the National Academies’ National Research Council (NRC) says rising project costs and an inadequate budget pose “a serious impediment” to the field of heliophysics. NASA officials disagree with the academies’ harsh assessment of the agency’s progress on a 10-year research plan adopted 5 years ago, citing a pipeline filled with major missions and increased funding for studying the results.

The analysis, by a committee of the academies’ Space Studies Board, is a midterm report card on the 2003 decadal plan that was requested by Congress. Although NASA receives average to good marks for its progress on many parts of the plan, it earns a D for making little progress on the Geospace Network, a program that would study the impact of solar variability on sensitive electronics used in satellites and ground-based power grids, and an F for failing to integrate its efforts with those of other disciplines and agencies, notably the Department of Energy.

Richard Fisher, who directs the heliophysics program at agency headquarters, acknowledges that the report may be “useful” but says he’s disappointed that it included neither a clear scientific assessment of the current situation nor recommendations on what NASA might do better. “We would have welcomed such an assessment so as to better address … the allocation of scarce resources and flight-project decisions,” he says.

The saga of two major projects featured in the 2003 decadal study–the Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO) and the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission–illustrates the problems facing NASA and the field. Both launches have been delayed by some 4 years, and the cost of each has more than doubled. SDO, which will study the effect of the solar atmosphere on near-Earth space, is now set to be launched later this year at a cost of nearly $900 million–far more than the original $400 million. The cost of MMS, which will use four separate spacecraft to study the structure of Earth’s magnetosphere, has grown from $350 million to $1 billion with a scheduled launch in 2014. “The resources … have not been used effectively,” says Daniel Baker, a space physicist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who was on the original 2003 panel. “The result is disastrous.”

Obscured view. NASA’s Solar Dynamic Observatory has been plagued by rising costs and launch delays.

CREDITS: SOHO-EIT CONSORTIUM/ESA/NASA; GSFC/NASA

The cost increases have deferred deployment of the Geospace Network until later in the next decade. And NASA’s decision in 2004 and 2005 to trim smaller programs such as Explorer because of shrinking budgets has deprived solar scientists of expected opportunities to put their instruments into orbit. “There’s just not enough money,” says Roderick Heelis, a University of Texas, Dallas, physicist who co-chaired the 11-member NRC panel with Stephen Fuselier of Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Center in Palo Alto, California.

Fisher says the heliophysics program is in better shape than the academies’ report suggests. SDO will be followed in 2012 by a series of spacecraft called the Radiation Belt Storm Probes, he notes, and NASA plans to launch the first satellite to orbit near the sun a year or so after MMS goes up. NASA’s balloon and small-rocket programs are growing, he adds.

Heelis says the panel wants future missions designed to make the best use of the money that’s available. But the forecast for funding solar exploration is cloudy at best. Under a long-term projection from the Bush Administration, the budget for heliophysics would drop from $831 million in 2007 to $598 million in 2010, before climbing to $747 million in 2013. The Obama Administration has not signaled what it plans to do.

Colorado’s Baker is encouraged by the strong interest in climate change research shown by White House officials and their awareness of the importance of space weather, two areas that could bolster NASA’s program. But solar scientists worry that their field may be eclipsed by overruns in the Mars Science Laboratory, the push to build a massive new spacecraft to orbit Jupiter, and the need to restart the flagging Earth science program. “There’s a zero-sum game mentality, which makes it hard for our aspirations to be met,” says Baker.

 

Science 13 March 2009:
Vol. 323. no. 5920, p. 1415
DOI: 10.1126/science.323.5920.1415

 

Science-2009-Lawler-Report_Puts_NASAs_Solar_Program_Under_a_Cloud-1415.pdf