Budget Deadlock Puts Muzzle on Galileo Scientists

NASA scientists invested their hopes, fears, almost 20 years and more than $1.3 billion to nudge their Galileo mission all the way to Jupiter. But now--weeks after the probe completed its fiery swan dive into the planet’s swirling atmosphere--they can’t tell the public that funded the mission what they have discovered there.

Until the federal government resumes its normal operations, the scientists are not allowed to make their findings public. Scientists were to present their preliminary findings at a Dec. 19 press conference, but failure to agree on a federal budget forced the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to cancel it because there is no money for such official nonessentials as television lights, satellite hookups, press kits and public relations personnel.

A scientist with data he can’t share is like a child with a present he can’t open. At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, the Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., and Caltech, planetary scientists are squirming with impatience, unable to unveil what one JPL official called “57 minutes of unique, glorious data.”

“It is certainly frustrating for the scientists who have waited so long,” said Galileo project scientist Torrence V. Johnson, who was among those who first proposed the mission 20 years ago. “They have really neat stuff and they are told they can’t talk about it with the people who paid for it.”

In recent weeks, the Galileo scientists have been analyzing the first comprehensive look into the turbulent atmosphere of the solar system’s largest planet, beamed back by the probe Dec. 7.

The need to keep silent is especially painful for the researchers who have spent their entire careers on the project. It is an unusual situation for the space agency as well, which is formally required by its charter to inform the public about its space activities.

The delayed public announcement is the latest hitch in a series of unusual stresses and strains for the people working on Galileo, in which their moment of public glory has been postponed again and again.

Indeed, the Galileo scientists and engineers have endured so many delays, specification changes, redesigns, funding reductions and equipment problems that a clinical psychologist who made a four-year study of the group concluded that serious depression was an occupational hazard of space science.

“This is a setback, but it is just one of many we have dealt with, and I suspect we are not through dealing with upsets,” said Galileo mission director Neal E. Ausman Jr., who has worked on the project for more than 18 years.

“We are all terribly disappointed that circumstances have overtaken us and we are unable to share our findings with the nation and the world,” he said. “We will wait patiently until the executive branch and the Congress get their act together.”

While the government shutdown has prevented scientists from discussing their data publicly, it has not interfered with any other critical elements of the mission, JPL officials said. The laboratory is operated by Caltech under contract to NASA, and so far JPL’s approximately 5,000 employees have not been subject to the government furloughs.

Many of the scientists involved in analyzing Galileo are university-based contract researchers, and the NASA employees at Ames involved in operating the project have been declared essential personnel.

Earlier this week, NASA mission engineers successfully reestablished contact with the main Galileo orbiter, from which the 757-pound atmosphere probe was launched, as it emerged from behind the sun. Ausman said the 2.5-ton craft was performing as expected. The craft’s 10 instruments will spend the next two years scanning Jupiter and its 16 moons.

“The most important thing to realize is, as with other essential services, the Galileo mission is safe,” Johnson said. “The data is being collected. The critical people are all ensuring the mission is working. The scientists are all being paid to analyze the data.”

In the meantime, the probe scientists are swapping data on the Internet and preparing formal research papers for peer-reviewed publication in the months to come. But they have agreed to withhold any public discussion of their data until they can “properly” present it together.

Whenever the federal government resumes normal operations, they still plan a public press conference to unveil the insights gained from the first earthly object to enter Jupiter’s atmosphere.

“The probe performed beautifully,” Johnson said. “It operated the way we had hoped. It got to where we expected in Jupiter’s atmosphere. We got excellent data. There are some very interesting surprises.

“It definitely is a bit of a letdown,” he said, “not to be able to share this with the public.”