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NASA Boss Names Whitson ISS 'Science Officer'
By Jim Banke
Senior Producer,
posted: 04:00 pm ET
16 September 2002
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe officially named astronaut Peggy Whitson as the International Space Station program's first "science officer" on Monday. "I'd be extremely honored to be the first science officer," Whitson said from aboard the complex orbiting 240 miles above the planet. As a member of the Expedition Five crew she and colleagues Valery Korzun and Sergei Treschev have spent more than 100 days in space and are scheduled to return to Earth in November. The new title is meant, in part, to place emphasis on the fact that science operations are happening on board the station at a time when critics are saying the complex is too expensive and isn't fulfilling its promise to be a world-class home for space research. An American astronaut will serve as science officer on each expedition crew and will be charged with making sure all the U.S. science experiments planned for that flight are completed. The role may be expanded in the future to include all international science operations. "The science that we're doing here is great," Whitson said. "I think we should try to do more. I think we are capable of doing more." To that end, Whitson called for the inclusion of more "task list" items -- a space station schedule category in which the crew is given a list of things to do that can be done almost at anytime when they have a few moments.Generally science experiments are rigidly scheduled and monitored, but if a number of science experiments can have some flexibilty built into them there's a chance that more science could be done, Whitson said. The new station crew title of science officer appears to be borrowed from the "Star Trek" television series, in which Mr. Spock of the planet Vulcan first served as the entertainment franchise's fictional science officer more than 30 years ago.
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