Can Congress Save NASA Science?

摘要

In a remarkable show of bipartisan concern, U.S. lawmakers have ordered NASA not to sacrifice research programs to pay for President George W. Bush's vision of humans on the moon and eventually Mars. But at the same time, they may have compounded NASA's problems by giving a tentative green light to Bush's plans while providing little relief for an impending budget crunch in science. Last week, a Senate funding panel told NASA to spend an additional $400 million in its 2006 budget to fix the Hubble Space Telescope and bolster the flagging earth sciences effort. But the panel added only $134 million to NASA's $4 billion science budget to do so.