鈥淲HAT next for NASA?鈥� is a question the beleaguered space agency has been wrestling with for the past decade. Last week it unveiled part of the answer. But it did so in the strangest fashion: not with the traditional blast of publicity designed to gain political support in Washington, but in a speech to a group of space enthusiasts in Houston, Texas. Blink and you鈥檇 have missed it. At a time when NASA needs all the political friends it can get, it seems a bizarre strategy. What is going on?
In recent years, NASA has navigated itself into deeper and deeper trouble. Its space probes developed a nasty habit of crashing into nearby planets and its project to replace the ageing space shuttle hit so many problems it was cancelled. Worst of all, the International Space Station (ISS) ran nearly $5 billion over budget. By this time last year, NASA鈥檚 political support had all but dried up and the agency鈥檚 very existence seemed threatened.
Enter Sean O鈥橩eefe, the bean counter chosen by President George W. Bush to head up NASA and return it to a position where it had a future. O鈥橩eefe was effectively given two years to sort out the financial problems of the ISS. Until then there would be no more support 鈥� no extra funding, that is. So O鈥橩eefe has largely kept his head down and applied his financial and managerial acumen to the immediate problems. Nothing concrete has yet emerged, though privatisation and collaboration with the military are in the air. There are also whispers that NASA has turned the corner, and is starting to regain the political confidence it needs to survive.
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All of which raises a rather delicate question: what kind of agency will emerge from the financial wreckage of the ISS? In other words, what is NASA for?
In Washington, the idea that NASA is just a space agency has always been considered naive. NASA is a political instrument that successive presidents have wielded with varying degrees of skill. During the cold war it demonstrated the superiority of capitalism over communism by putting men on the Moon. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the ISS showed that the US and its allies could work with their former enemies 鈥� and in a way that kept Russian rocket scientists employed at home rather than in Iraq or Iran. But today NASA is unhappily out of kilter with the political goals of its masters. It is not much use for fighting Iraq or hunting Osama bin Laden.
Finding a down-to-Earth role for NASA is as much a task for Bush and Congress as it is for O鈥橩eefe. But what if there isn鈥檛 one; what if space is all there is? Washington would be naive to dismiss space exploration as wasted effort. NASA鈥檚 successful projects have always been superb advertisements for American ingenuity and pioneering spirit. They inspire more awe among the world鈥檚 peoples than silos full of nuclear missiles.
What the new NASA administrator can do is to spell out the agency鈥檚 goals in space. This is what began to emerge in Houston from Gary Martin, who this month was appointed by O鈥橩eefe as NASA鈥檚 Future Technology Architect. Martin鈥檚 plans focus on scientific exploration beyond the low-Earth orbit of the ISS and the technology needed to achieve it. There are high-profile ideas here: revisiting the Moon, an inflatable space station at a gravitational blind spot and setting up third-generation space telescopes.
Of course, these are long-term plans and there is still much to be fixed. Plenty of the old inefficient, unfocused NASA is still around, and the budget problems are far from solved. The agency鈥檚 new research programme for replacing the shuttle, for example, is already in trouble. Last month the General Accounting Office warned NASA that its definition of what it wanted of its new craft is too vague to be useful. It also warned that lax management controls over the project could land the agency back in the financial mire.
But, NASA is only halfway through its two-year probation. Assuming it emerges leaner and healthier from this period, O鈥橩eefe will want to have plans in place to take it forward. Last week鈥檚 news is evidence that these are already coming together. The fact that it came from Houston suggests some wily political maneouvring. O鈥橩eefe will be eager to learn how the public and Congress react as the ideas trickle out. If the response is positive, look out for more of NASA鈥檚 vision. That will be the surest sign that the agency is emerging from its worst crisis yet.