NASA's Goals Delete Mention of Home Planet

source: New York Times, http://tinyurl.com/gt35w

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: July 22, 2006
From 2002 until this year, NASA's mission statement, prominently
featured in its budget and planning documents, read: "To understand
and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for
life; to inspire the next generation of explorers ... as only NASA
can."

In early February, the statement was quietly altered, with the phrase
"to understand and protect our home planet" deleted. In this
year's budget and planning documents, the agency's mission is "to
pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and
aeronautics research."

David E. Steitz, a spokesman for the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration, said the aim was to square the statement with President
Bush's goal of pursuing human spaceflight to the Moon and Mars.

But the change comes as an unwelcome surprise to many NASA scientists,
who say the "understand and protect" phrase was not merely window
dressing but actively influenced the shaping and execution of research
priorities. Without it, these scientists say, there will be far less
incentive to pursue projects to improve understanding of terrestrial
problems like climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

"We refer to the mission statement in all our research proposals that
go out for peer review, whenever we have strategy meetings," said
Philip B. Russell, a 25-year NASA veteran who is an atmospheric chemist
at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "As civil
servants, we're paid to carry out NASA's mission. When there was
that very easy-to-understand statement that our job is to protect the
planet, that made it much easier to justify this kind of work."

Several NASA researchers said they were upset that the change was made
at NASA headquarters without consulting the agency's 19,000 employees
or informing them ahead of time.

Though the "understand and protect" phrase was deleted in February,
when the Bush administration submitted budget and planning documents to
Congress, its absence has only recently registered with NASA employees.


Mr. Steitz, the NASA spokesman, said the agency might have to improve
internal communications, but he defended the way the change was made,
saying it reflected the management style of Michael D. Griffin, the
administrator at the agency.

"Strategic planning comes from headquarters down," he said, and
added, "I don't think there was any mal-intent or idea of
exclusion."

The line about protecting the earth was added to the mission statement
in 2002 under Sean O'Keefe, the first NASA administrator appointed by
President Bush, and was drafted in an open process with scientists and
employees across the agency.

In the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which established the agency
in 1958, the first objective of the agency was listed as "the
expansion of human knowledge of the earth and of phenomena in the
atmosphere and space."

And since 1972, when NASA launched the first Landsat satellite to track
changes on the earth's surface, the agency has been increasingly
involved in monitoring the environment and as a result has been
immersed in political disputes over environmental policy and spending,
said W. Henry Lambright, a professor of public administration and
political science at Syracuse University who has studied the trend.

The shift in language echoes a shift in the agency's budgets toward
space projects and away from earth missions, a shift that began in
2004, the year Mr. Bush announced his vision of human missions to the
Moon and beyond.

The "understand and protect" phrase was cited repeatedly by James
E. Hansen, a climate scientist at NASA who said publicly last winter
that he was being threatened by political appointees for speaking out
about the dangers posed by greenhouse gas emissions.

Dr. Hansen's comments started a flurry of news media coverage in late
January; on Feb. 3, Mr. Griffin issued a statement of "scientific
openness."

The revised mission statement was released with the agency's proposed
2007 budget on Feb. 6. But Mr. Steitz said Dr. Hansen's use of the
phrase and its subsequent disappearance from the mission statement was
"pure coincidence."

Dr. Hansen, who directs the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, a NASA
office, has been criticized by industry-backed groups and Republican
officials for associating with environmental campaigners and his
endorsement of Senator John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election.

Dr. Hansen said the change might reflect White House eagerness to shift
the spotlight away from global warming.

"They're making it clear that they have the authority to make this
change, that the president sets the objectives for NASA, and that they
prefer that NASA work on something that's not causing them a
problem," he said.

.

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