The Committee then voted to limit total spending on the Station over the next five years to only $6.7 billion -- although NASA said earlier this year that it might need as much as $11 billion during that period to make the Station work the way it was supposed to.

In its official press statement, the Senate Committee said: "NASA has an outside review committee that will present their recommendations to fix the [cost overrun] problem this fall. That means we are in a wait-and-see mode until NASA and OMB [the Office of Management and Budget] give us a new plan."

Simultaneously, the Committee -- again, largely at the urging of Sen. Mikulski, who became chairman only two months ago when control of the Senate switched to the Democrats -- voted to increase funding for NASA's other programs.

In a reverse of the House move, it raised funding for NASA's other programs, both in the sciences and in aeronautics research programs (whose serious cuts this year in the proposed Bush budget have led to widespread outcries).

While many of the precise details of these increases are still somewhat unclear, one dramatic move is known. The Senate Committee cancelled $25 million in planned new spending to develop new deep-space propulsion systems which NASA claimed might allow a probe to reach Pluto in time to observe its atmosphere, even if it was launched as late as 2009 and so could not utilize a Jupiter gravity assist.

This claim has met universal skepticism from planetary scientists, including an official denunciation by the Division of Planetary Sciences which represents most U.S. planetologists. And it ordered that that money should be diverted instead directly to a possible 2004 or 2006 Pluto mission ("Pluto-Kuiper Express") using a conventional Jupiter gravity assist.

This, by itself, is not nearly enough to initiate the Pluto mission. Even in the lower-cost version which may be carried out as a result of NASA's recent call for competitive proposals for the mission, the PKE mission could cost as much as $500 million -- while the sum total amount of money that would have been spent on the deep-space propulsion program over the coming years is only $100 million.

However, the Committee also announced that during the upcoming House-Senate conference to resolve the differences between the two houses' budgets for NASA, "the Committee expects to address the issue of full funding for PKE."

The Committee also voted to request that NASA initiate a full-scale "Outer Planets Program", with a whole series of missions of which the Pluto-Kuiper Express would be only the first.

The Europa Orbiter, under Bush's budget, would have been NASA's next mission to the outer Solar System instead (with a launch scheduled in 2008) -- but, unlike the Pluto probe, it requires major advances in technology to cut its weight and increase the resistance of its electronics to Jupiter's radiation, and so its projected cost has been steadily swelling to the point that it seemed likely to suck away almost all the money NASA might spend on outer planets exploration over the next decade.

The Committee also responded to this by asking NASA to consider revising the Europa Orbiter program in the same way it revised the Pluto mission last December -- that is, instead of giving the Jet Propulsion Laboratory its accustomed monopoly of planetary exploration programs, it would issue an "Announcement of Opportunity" and let various independent competing teams of engineers and scientists propose their own designs for the mission, which would them be appraised by a committee to see which one was most cost-effective.

Congress had earlier ordered NASA to continue this evaluation process for design proposals received for the Pluto probe even though Bush (with NASA Administrator Dan Goldin's approval) was already attempting to cancel the mission.

The result was the selection in May of two finalist Pluto mission concepts: one from JPL, and the other from the Applied Physics Lab of Johns Hopkins University (which successfully ran the NEAR probe of astreroid Eros, and is scheduled to fly other missions to Mercury and some comets in the next few years).

If the Pluto mission is finally funded, one of these two designs will be chosen for it in November.

The Senate's hope is that a similar move might also allow a major improvement in the design of Europa Orbiter, and thus a cut in its current $800 million cost -- especially since NASA itself is currently running a reappraisal process for the design of its entire Solar System exploration program, with particular emphasis on its outer-planets part.

It's possible that NASA may even decide to completely replace Europa Orbiter with another mission for the time being.

All this, however, depends on the results of the coming House-Senate negotiations after both houses of Congress approve their Appropriations Commitees' decisions (which seems very likely).

Given the Space Station's current desperate quandary, it's quite possible that the end agreement will raise NASA spending by much less than the House's $415 million increase, but still provide funding to restore the Crew Rescue Vehicle -- in which case the cuts in the rest of NASA's programs may end up being even bigger than those suggested by the House.

On the other hand, advocates of the Pluto probe can take comfort in the fact that the House made no attempt to remove the $25 million for deep-space propulsion systems in order to fund the Station.

So -- even if the Station Crew Rescue Vehicle is funded -- if the deep-space propulsion budget is cancelled, there is at least a slim chance that there may still be enough money left in the final FY 2002 NASA budget to allow the start of the 2004 Pluto probe as well.

All these crucial decisions will be made in the fall, at the same time that NASA's review committee delivers its verdict on the best course of action to deal with the Station's major problems -- and, perhaps, at a time when Congress has to massively reappraise its future spending plans in general, given the sudden shrinkage in the size of official estimates of the federal surplus.

Tune in over the coming months to see how these genuinely fateful decisions regarding NASA's future turn out.

Back to Part One

Related Links
SpaceDaily
Search SpaceDaily
Subscribe To SpaceDaily Express

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News

SPACE TRAVEL

Space Science Row Exposes NASA Budget Friction
Cameron Park - July 25, 2001