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Prospects of a $1 billion cut from NASA’s budget next year has forced
space scientists to take sides in the increasingly heated debate over the
space station. The cuts mean that NASA will have to cancel or delay either
the space station or major space science programmes, says John Bahcall of
the Institute for Advanced Studies.

The House Appropriations Committee was due to start work on the NASA
budget this week, and cuts seem inevitable. Last week, Bahcall broadcast
a letter via electronic mail, urging astronomers to phone or write to the
committee to urge it to preserve space science.

Bahcall suggested that the Space InfraRed Telescope Facility – which
the National Research Council made the top priority for astronomy in the
1990s – and the Advanced X-ray Astronomy Facility, already in development,
are at risk. Also under threat are the Earth Observing Satellite, the Orbiting
Solar Laboratory, the Comet Rendezvous and Asteroid Flyby (CRAF) mission,
and the Cassini mission to Saturn. Delays in funding could kill off CRAF
altogether, because its launch must be timed to match the orbits of the
target comet and asteroid.

Bahcall told New Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ he was not against the space station: ‘We’re
not opposing anything’, he said, just trying to persuade Congress of ‘the
advantages of space sciences’. However, his letter leaves no doubt that
the space station is low on his list of priorities. Other scientists are
convinced that NASA Administrator Richard Truly, a former astronaut, considers
the space station ‘sacrosanct’, and are ready to criticise the space station
directly.

Earlier this year, a review panel headed by Norman Augustine, president
of the Martin Marietta corporation, urged NASA to emphasise space science
rather than manned missions. In January, the American Physical Society said
that ‘scientific justification is lacking for a permanently manned space
station in Earth orbit’.

Nicolaas Bloembergen, president of the Physical Society, said that the
new, smaller design of the space station made it ‘even less likely than
the earlier version to make a significant contribution to science’. Brent
Dalrymple, president of the American Geophysical Union, said unmanned satellites
can study the Earth and its atmosphere ‘better, less expensively, and with
far less risk to human lives’ than a space station.