Comments Come After Conference Call On Planetary Research And Analysis Restructuring

NASA's Planetary Director Jim Green held a virtual town hall meeting with the planetary scientific community Tuesday in which he outlined and answered questions about the proposed agency restructuring plans to consolidate some of the supporting research and technology activities to ensure a balanced planetary science portfolio for the next decade.

"NASA's commitment to planetary exploration research and analysis activities will remain strong with no lessening of our resolve to continue to lead the world in this area while reflecting fiscal realities," Green said in a statement following the virtual meeting. "This restructuring better aligns the program with the planetary goals and objectives in direct response to National Academy report recommendations. The restructuring of the research and analysis program has been occurring over the last several years and has been based on significant community input."
 
According to Greene:

• NASA is committed to a vibrant and coordinated strategy, not only of Mars exploration, but missions that currently include ground-breaking science missions to asteroids, the moon, and other locations in our solar system.
• These missions include Pluto New Horizons that has yet to reach their destinations; Dawn's mission to the dwarf planet, Ceres, and multiple missions still in operation, such as the Cassini mission to Saturn and Messenger mission to Mercury.
• In addition to launching last month a mission to the study the upper atmosphere of Mars, NASA currently operates two rovers on the Martian surface. The agency also is planning to launch a lander and another rover in the coming years.

NASA says Planetary Research and Analysis (R&A) originally started with a few “Core” programs decades ago based on disciplines, including Planetary Atmospheres, Planetary Astronomy, Cosmochemistry, and Exobiology. To grow the R&A budget, new program elements were created and added on, and special targeted and focused program elements that should have retired have stayed in the portfolio to be able to show a mix of program elements. With limited budgets and growing numbers of planetary scientists, proposal pressure is increasing and selection rates plummeting, NASA says.
 
NASA's goals for the restructuring are to make the structure of the R&A program explainable to those outside of NASA; To make it easy for those outside of NASA to compute the amount of money spent on grants and; and to reduce the time between proposal submission and award announcement. The stated Planetary Science Objective is to "ascertain the content, origin, and evolution of the solar system and the potential for life elsewhere."

FMI: www.nasa.gov