I'm in Orlando, Florida, attending the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences. This is where the world's planetary scientists report their latest findings. One of the meeting's traditions is "NASA Night," where the space agency's top planetary science administrators answer questions from the assembled scientists. Occasionally, you don't feel a lot of love at these exchanges - not surprising when you consider the vast majority of data the scientists need comes through NASA missions, and the agency's sometimes spotty performance.
I'm glad to say, last night was different. There's a new team in charge at NASA, and they were saying all the right things. The new Associate Administrator of the Science Mission Directorate is Alan Stern, a member of Astronomy's editorial advisory board and frequent author.
He won a round of applause by saying: "Science is more than taking data, it's analyzing it." That may seem obvious, but it's not something the old NASA always followed through on. In an era where every budget dollar is precious, once you've designed a spacecraft, built it, launched it, and waited months or years for it to reach its target and return data, money occasionally ran out before analysis was complete. Stern vowed he would never cut funds for research and analysis.
Perhaps most exciting, he announced a series of initiatives designed to bring a smile to almost every planetary scientist. First, NASA plans to reinitiate a suborbital rocket and balloon program for planetary science. This not only will provide good science, but also serve as a training ground for future scientists and for technology development. Stern also announced the creation of a NASA Lunar Science Institute, which will reinvigorate the lunar science community in preparation for future manned missions. And NASA will offer to fly a small Canadian mission to Mars, which will include full U.S. participation, by 2013.
Two of Stern's biggest announcements, however, concerned space telescopes. First, the Hubble Space Telescope will devote up to 30 orbits to studying the Moon during the next cycle of proposals. And best of all, NASA is starting an effort to give the next-generation James Webb Space Telescope the capability to follow moving targets - solar system objects to you and me.
It was a thrilling NASA Night for many people, including me. And if NASA can meet these ambitious goals, there should be a lot more great science in the years to come.