WHEN President Bush announced his moon and Mars initiative back in January, astronomers started getting nervous. Science programmes have a way of getting swallowed up by presidentially ordained redirections of the space programme 鈥� for example, scientists complained about reduced spending on planetary exploration in the early years of the International Space Station project. Bush鈥檚 plans to send human beings beyond Earth orbit for the first time in decades, to establish a base on the moon, and put astronauts on Mars are far more ambitious than the ISS, so there were immediate fears about what worthy projects might get slashed in order to pick up the tab.
Those fears have been borne out as NASA has reordered its budget over the ensuing months. First and most publicly came the cancellation of the Hubble telescope servicing mission, signalling a virtual death sentence for what has been a jewel in NASA鈥檚 crown. The dust from that decision has still not settled, with an independent report due shortly on possible options for extending Hubble鈥檚 rich and productive life.
Other lower-profile programmes within NASA鈥檚 planning cycle have also been scaled back, delayed or so severely curtailed that they might not survive. And some scientists are howling 鈥� mostly in private, so far 鈥� about the possible losses to science.
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NASA鈥檚 science activities can now be divided into two categories, say some scientists who have worked for a long time in the space programme: those that support the moon-Mars initiative, and 鈥渙ther鈥� 鈥� a category that includes Earth sciences, solar physics, studies of the structure and evolution of the universe, and all aeronautical research. In the past, NASA research has yielded a flood of advances in these areas, but all are now under some threat.
Of course, some researchers, especially those involved in planetary sciences, may stand to gain from the shift in priorities. Robotics research, to design and build the next generation of roving craft that will build on the results of the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, will clearly be one of the big winners. So will much work on planetary geology, rocket propulsion and life support. But research in many other fields could suffer devastating blows.
Cosmology is facing a big crunch, as most of the missions to study the origins and structure of the universe are missing from the new set of priorities. The biggest blow is to a set of three planned observatories collectively known as the Beyond Einstein initiative. They are in some sense successors to the four 鈥済reat observatories鈥� 鈥� of which Hubble was the first 鈥� that covered a broad span of the spectrum from infrared wavelengths to gamma rays. The Beyond Einstein observatories would search for black holes with an X-ray spectrometer; seek evidence of the inflation stage of big-bang cosmic expansion by looking at microwave background radiation at millimetre wavelengths; and try to discover the nature of the dark energy that constitutes the majority of the universe鈥檚 mass, through observations of supernovae and gravitational lensing.
These missions had already gone through all the normal stages of the approval process. Many sound and worthwhile missions were weeded out. The teams that designed them were poised and ready, expecting to move ahead to the next stage. Now the projects face delays that will at best add years to the early development stages, and could lead to a slow death.
Missions that were further along remain officially in the plans, but with slimmed-down budgets and stretched-out timelines. LISA, an array of satellites that will form a huge laser system for detecting gravitational waves, has been pushed back, and so has an array of co-orbiting X-ray telescopes called Constellation X, which is designed to be 100 times as powerful as any previous X-ray telescope.
These delays and cutbacks aren鈥檛 just part of the normal ebb and flow of priorities that can hit any government programme. For well over a decade the space agency has set scientific goals in an orderly, structured way, with committees within different areas drawing up detailed road maps that set the priorities for a decade ahead.
All this has now been swept away. Rocky Kolb, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago and Fermilab, says he has never before seen such a radical change in the way the space agency does business. Of course, it remains to be seen whether Bush鈥檚 initiative survives the presidential elections, now less than six months away. But even if it is discarded, there is no guarantee that the damage can be repaired. Though the Democratic candidate, John Kerry, has scorned the Bush plan, he has not offered any alternative vision. The only candidate who has called for a boost to the budget for space research is Dennis Kucinich, whose poll results put him neck-and-neck with the man in the moon.
The delays have already left their mark. Even if the US space programme鈥檚 course suddenly shifts back closer to where it was, some of these important projects might not come through unscathed, and may well wither away entirely. If that happens, science will be the poorer for it.