Space Study Urges Planetary Exploration

Concluding a massive study of the U.S. space science program, the National Research Council’s Space Science Board on Tuesday called for establishment of a satellite network capable of constant observation of the entire Earth.

At the same time, it recommended intensive planetary exploration, emphasizing Mars during the last years of the 20th Century and the first of the 21st but including unmanned landings on Mercury and Venus and probes into the atmosphere of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

The initiatives were set forth in a seven-volume report, based on a study started at the behest of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in 1984--a year and a half before the Challenger shuttle explosion brought the U.S. space program to a standstill.

Although avoiding direct criticism of the shuttle program or the permanently manned space station planned as the next major initiative, the report renewed the long-standing argument of many scientists that the U.S. space program has been too much oriented to the goal of extending man’s presence in space.

“For the past 30 years, scientific investigation has been neither the only objective of the space program of the United States nor even the dominant one,” it said. “The Apollo project and the development of the space transportation system and, more recently, of the space station were not primarily designed to respond to requirements set by the various disciplines of space science. Instead, establishing a human presence in space and accomplishment of large engineering projects for their own sake have driven a major part of our space program since the establishment of NASA in 1958.

“The steering group for this study recommends that the present ordering of priorities in the national space program be changed.”

Specifically, the panel urged that “the advance of science and its applications to human welfare be adopted and implemented as an objective no less central to the space program of the United States than any other, such as the capability of expanding man’s presence in space.”

Science objectives, recommended for the period between 1995 and 2015, were similar to those proposed in two other studies on the future of the American space program--one by the National Commission on Space, headed by former NASA Administrator Thomas O. Paine, the other led by former astronaut Sally K. Ride.

For a broad range of Earth studies early in the next century, the science board recommended a set of five heavily instrumented satellites in stationary orbit, plus half a dozen other satellites in polar orbit, all continuously feeding data into a computer center, which would also receive information from sensors on Earth and distribute information to users around the world.

“We now have the technology and the incentive to mount a ‘mission to planet Earth,’ the board declared. “The United States should implement this integrated program of fundamental research on the origin, evolution and nature of our planet, its place in our solar system and its interaction with mankind. The mission’s feasibility has been demonstrated. We now need to act.”

In the course of the board’s study, separate panels considered six areas of space science; the board made no effort to set priorities but called for long-range new initiatives in every instance.

In the field of lunar and planetary exploration, it proposed not only landing robots to explore Mars and Venus and sending probes into the atmosphere of the outer planets but spacecraft interceptions of comets and asteroids and efforts to find planetary systems around nearby stars in the galaxy.

The United States, it said, should press “development of specialized telescopes capable of detecting planets at least as small as Uranus and Neptune around a large number of nearby stars.”

“The technology on which these telescopes depend is now within reach for use in space; the use of such telescopes in association with the space station would permit an observing program sufficiently long to allow the search for and study of planetary systems around a large number of nearby stars.”

The report, delivered to NASA Administrator James C. Fletcher, made no attempt to estimate the cost of the programs. But, in a letter, National Research Council Chairman Frank Press acknowledged that they add up to “a much larger space science program than can be realistically anticipated in the period of time examined in the study.” Nevertheless, he added, the objectives should still be “pursued at the appropriate time.”