NASA Slated To Receive Billions To Study Earth

[IDemo]

NPR
by Jon Hamilton
April 5, 2010

NASA, the agency known for exploring space, will be spending a lot more time studying Earth in the next few years.

The Obama administration has proposed a budget for NASA that includes billions of dollars for satellites and other tools to help scientists investigate Earth-bound problems, especially climate change.

That represents a major turnaround for NASA's Earth Science Division, which had been allowed to languish during much of the 1990s.

Back then, the division had so little money it wasn't able to replace aging satellites that monitor things such as polar ice, coastal wetlands, ocean temperatures and chemicals in the atmosphere.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125507009

[keepthemhonest]

1. What a great idea.

It makes so much sense.

[mopinko]

2. that's not the change i

oh wait

[IDemo]

3. How times change

At NASA, Earth is Removed from Mission Statement

In February 2006, the phrase "to understand and protect the home planet" was quietly removed from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)'s official mission statement. Because agency mission statements are routinely used to justify research and funding decisions, many scientists were not only surprised to discover the change, but also concerned that the change meant more funding would be shifted away from studies of Earth, including climate change research, and redirected to NASA's planned new series of manned space missions.

A NASA atmospheric chemist commented, “We refer to the mission statement in all our research proposals that go out for peer review…as civil servants, we’re paid to carry out NASA’s mission. When there was that very easy-to-understand statement that our job is to protect the planet that made it much easier to justify this kind of work.” NASA scientists responding to a Union of Concerned Scientists survey also expressed concerns that changing priorities and lack of funding were seriously undermining the agency’s ability to continue with high-quality research into climate change.

http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/abuses_of_science/at-nasa-earth-is-removed.html