Senate VA/HUD Committee Report: Space Science
As reported in FYI #106, the Senate Appropriations Committee on July 14 passed H.R. 4624, the VA/HUD/Independent Agencies appropriations bill for fiscal year 1995. The bill now goes to the Senate floor, although no date has yet been scheduled for floor action.
Accompanying the Committee’s bill is a report (S. Rept. 103-311) giving the committee’s recommendations for funding. FYIs #108 and 109 provide selected portions of the report relating to NASA. NASA’s space science programs fall within the “Science, aeronautics, and technology account,” which would receive $5,901,200,000 under the Committee’s bill. This amount is equal to the budget request and the House recommendation. Below are selected quotes from the portion of the report related to NASA space science:
“The NASA Science Program is comprised primarily of three programs.
The Space Science Program includes activities related to the exploration of the solar system, our understanding of the origin and evolution of the universe, and the fundamental laws of the stars and planets. The Life and Microgravity Sciences Program includes activities supporting use of the unique environment of space to increase our understanding of the impact of microgravity on the human body and the behavior of materials. The Mission to Planet Earth Program includes activities which support increasing our understanding of the global environment as an integrated system.”
“The future of space science. - The Committee is concerned that no new space science missions are now planned to be launched by NASA after 1997 at this time. In addition, it is deeply troubled by reports that a so-called wedge of funding in the 1996 budget for any new science flight projects may require one-half of the funds to come from existing science budgets. Neither condition is acceptable, and the Committee will expect whatever pool of funds to be used for future new starts to come outside of the existing base of space science funds. The Committee expects the National Academy of Sciences to factor this funding and mission vacuum into its assessment for the need for a national institute for space science.”
The report provides supportive language on the United States-Japan Yohkoh mission to collect solar x-ray and spectroscopic data, the SOFIA observatory for infrared astronomy, the Wake shield facility, and urges NASA to “review the possibility of extending the EUVE [Extreme ultraviolet explorer] mission through year 2000 by achieving cost savings through turning over day-to-day mission operations to a private university.”
Some of the recommended changes to the space science budget request are listed below:
+$25,000,000 for the global geospace science mission; -$15,000,000 from mission operations and data analysis for the global geospace science mission; +$10,000,000 to mission operations and data analysis for the Hubble telescope; -$19,000,000 from the Mars Surveyor Program. “This reduction can be taken without any effect on this new start because an identical amount in recovered fee from the Mars Observer mission will be applied to the Mars Surveyor budget by NASA in 1995;" -$7,000,000 from launch services due to revised cost estimates for Cassini launch integration; +$10,000,000 to life and microgravity sciences, over and above the amounts requested in the budget, for the NASA-NIH protocol; +$17,000,000 for spacelab payload development... “applied to science experiments displaced due to the proposed termination of several spacelab missions in the budget;" +$50,000,000 for the Earth observing system. “These funds should be applied to restore the projected lost schedule for launch of the PM-1 spacecraft;" -$9,800,000 from space station attached payloads for SAGE-III; and +$10,000,000 for mission communications services to offset proposed reductions in TDRSS operations. (Within the Mission Support activity, $75,000,000 is deducted from the replenishment TDRSS spacecraft.)
See FYI #96 for the House recommendations for NASA.
