European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli works with the Pulmonary Function in Flight experiment aboard the International Space Station. Photo Credit/NASA Photo
A new National Research Council report recommends a more strategic footing for NASA’s life and physical sciences research programs in order to establish the underpinning needed for the agency’s future human space exploration aspirations.
The 492-page report, Recapturing a Future for Space Exploration: Life and Physical Sciences Research in a New Era, was released Tuesday by the research council, a Congressionally-chartered think tank.
Current support within NASA for the two science disciplines has slipped in response to shifting agency priorities and increased efforts by lawmakers to reduce spending. As a result, life and physical sciences research lack a clearly identifiable institutional home within NASA as well as strong leadership, according to the findings.
In 2010, President Obama set NASA on a long running course of human exploration that retires the shuttle, extends activities aboard the International Space Station from 2015 to at least 2020. The policy calls for astronauts to aim for the exploration of a near Earth asteroid in the mid-2020s and eventually aim for a landing on Mars.
However, the lack of support for the life and physical sciences has left NASA poorly positioned to take full advantage of the International Space Station as a research platform to overcome the obstacles to human deep space missions, the report says.
Those obstacles range from the physical and mental well being of the astronauts to the adaptation by microbes, plants and other animals to weightlessness. They include the performance of materials used to fabricate spacecraft and equipment as well as engineering systems, like those that recycle air and water, generate power and provide propulsion.
The report was compiled by an 18-member panel of NRC experts in biology, chemistry, engineering, medicine and physics.
“The present program has contracted to below critical mass and is perceived from outside NASA as lacking the structure within the agency and the commitment of resources to attract researchers or to accomplish real advances,” concludes the report led by Elizabeth Cantwell, director of Engineering Mission Development at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Wendy Kohrt, University of Colorado professor of medicine.
In addition to stronger leadership and sufficient stable funding, the report urges NASA to improve the quality of its investigations, make regular research solicitations and place a stronger emphasis on the links between the experiments and needed mission capabilities.
According to the panel, the space agency should make use of free-flying satellites, suborbital rockets, parabolic aircraft, drop towers and other ground-based laboratories in the pursuit.