Space flight threatened

Press, 6 May 1983, Page 13

Space flight threatened

From

ROBIN McKIE

in San Francisco

American scientists are struggling to save their planetary exploration programme. After two decades of sending probes to more than 20 different worlds, they are dismayed to find themselves with only one new mission approved by the Reagan Administration for the years ahead.

In an attempt to prevent extinction, a special committee of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has produced a bargain plan to fund missions to Venus, Mars, Saturn, and the asteroids, at rock-bottom prices.

The plan suggests building a basic “space bus” modelled on cheap Earth satellites, as well as renewed co-operation with the European Space Agency further to reduce costs.

“The drop in planetary missions has been devastating,” says one of the report’s authors, Dr Torrence Johnson, of N.A.S.A.’s jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena. “We have to convince the President, Congress, and the public that matters must be put right. We are not asking for a feast but we can’t have a famine either.”

America’s exploration of the planets has been a victim of its own success. From primitive beginnings it has developed some of the most impressive engineering undertakings ever carried out. Worlds that were mere pinpoints of light 20 years ago have been revealed in detail — from the giant canyons of Mars to the sulphuric acid clouds of Venus and the icy volcanoes of Jupiter’s moons. This has all been achieved by robot probes operating up to a billion miles from home.

But the price has been high. The last few missions each cost several billion dollars and to a costconscious Reagan Administration more concerned with space’s military and commercial applications that has proved unacceptable. Planned probes to the Sun, Halley’s Comet, and other targets have all been axed. Only one, the Galileo mission to Jupiter and its moons, has survived.

The golden age of planetary

exploration may be over but a great deal can still be done, argues the committee. Its report, “Planetary Exploration Through the Year 2000,” identifies several important goals: determining the origin of the solar system, explaining why life originated on Earth but not on other planets, and pinpointing mineral resources. As a start there must be “a core programme of high scientific priority, moderate technological challenge and modest cost,” the report says. Instead of billion dollar missions, prices would be limited to $3OO million. Using the basic space bus, to be known as the Planetary Explorer, Venus would be mapped by radar; a Mars orbiter would study the E Janet’s climate; a mission would e sent to the asteroids; and a probe would be landed on Titan, the giant moon of Saturn. Understanding the Martian climate would help understand Earth’s; the asteroids could reveal mineral

wealth for future exploitation; while similarities between Earth and the lifeless Venus and Titan might provide clues to life’s origins.

Later missions could be sent to comets and the outer planets. In addition, occasional highly expensive and technologically demanding probes could be sent to return soil from Mars and Venus.

“The first four missions are the basic minimum we need to keep planetary exploration alive and I think we will get a lot of public support for them,” Dr Johnson says. “After what we have achieved, people have been a little shocked to find so little is now planned.” Certainly things look meagre at present. Apart from Galileo, there is only Voyager H, which will visit Uranus and Neptune before disappearing into interstellar space in 1989.

This month, American scientists acknowledged that Viking, their remaining Martian lander, has ceased operating and is unlikely to resume the weekly reports it has sent back to Earth for the past seven years.—Copyright — London Observer Service.