"We think it's going to be really, really good news," said one agency official, who spoke on condition he not be identified. The request will include funds for new starts, such as a boost for efforts to study the sun as it reaches the maximum of its 11-year cycle of activity.
But that good news is tempered by the strains which congressional pork projects are putting on NASA in the near term.
As a result of $371 million in earmarks to the 2000 budget, NASA managers say they are being forced to delay some launches and scale back planning for future projects.
NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin warned legislators in a recent letter that the adjustments pose some hardship for an agency struggling to fund existing efforts. And NASA will have to trim its 2000 budget even further in coming weeks to accommodate a .38 percent cut which Congress and Clinton agreed to last fall.
Among the casualties of the exploding pork barrel are two Explorer projects, which are specifically geared toward lower cost and more frequent access to space than typical space missions.
The Swift Gamma Ray Burst Explorer, slated for a 2003 launch, and the Full-Sky Astrometric Mapping Explorer (FAME) scheduled to go up in 2004, will be delayed six to nine months in order to save $18 million.
FAME is a joint development effort of the U.S. Naval Observatory, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space, the Naval Research Laboratory and Omitron Inc.
FAME's goal is to give astronomers more accurate measurements of extra-galactic distances. Swift is an effort to understand the mysterious and powerful gamma-ray bursts in the early universe. Swift's team, led by Penn State University, includes Spectrum Astro Inc.
In all, NASA's space science office has had to accommodate $23.7 million in congressional pet projects, from $1.5 million for a science center in Louisville, Kentucky, to $2.5 million for an astronomy education center on the big island of Hawaii.
Meanwhile, Earth scientists are scaling back their long-term plans in order to pay for a large quantity of congressional pork. The flagship of the Earth Observing System --Terra -- was launched in December, and two more major spacecraft -- Aqua and Chem -- are planned for the next four years.
But NASA is slicing $26.6 million out of the Aqua project, though agency officials say a large portion will come out of reserve money that has not been spent anyway. They don't anticipate a delay for Aqua's launch, now set for late 2000.
The agency also wanted to spend nearly $30 million to plan for missions to come after the Aqua and Chem satellites. NASA spokesman David Steitz said the agency intended to use at least $20 million of that money to plan for a joint mission between NASA, the Department of Defense and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to bridge the gap between Earth-observing flights and a new generation of weather satellites.
That cut, and a few others within the Earth science program, will allow managers to cope with the $35.3 million in special interest projects inserted by Congress in the 2000 budget.
A host of other more minor budget cuts will hurt, but not cripple or even delay other programs. For example, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy project faces a $5.3 million cut in order to fit in various congressional pork within the space science office.
The joint U.S.-German effort is to modify a Boeing 747 into a flying observatory with a 98.4-inch (2.5-meter) telescope that would begin operations in 2002. Because of a delay in work on the German-built telescope, NASA officials say they hope to accommodate the cut without dramatically affecting the start of operations.
And the decision to cut $8 million, part of a joint U.S.-Canadian small launch vehicle effort, should cause a slip in the December 2001 first launch date, but not a cancellation of the program.
The 2000 budget jigsaw also leaves NASA puzzling over how to fit in those congressional wishes that are larger than the agency's pocketbook. For example, lawmakers want the space shuttle to make another Spacelab flight before December 2001 to conduct science, but NASA managers say they don't have the money, despite $40 million earmarked by Congress for the proposed mission.
That amount falls considerably short of the $137 million to $166 million needed, agency officials say. They say they are stumped as to how to come up with an additional $100 million for the flight.
Another vexing problem for NASA is how to provide International Space Station (ISS) crews with an escape vehicle. Work was to begin this year in earnest on the craft, but because of a congressional cut of $100 million to the project's request in 2000, NASA will have to delay that effort.
As a result, it will be an additional year before the vehicle can be ready. That means the full half-dozen crew complement could be ready to occupy the completed station a full year before the vehicle can be orbited. This gap could pose problems in occupying the station, agency officials warn.
Concerns about the shuttle and ISS programs, meanwhile, are prompting NASA managers to scale back their efforts at downsizing. Worried that the agency has cut back too much on personnel at the Johnson Space Center in Houston and Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, NASA intends to spend nearly $10 million to retain and add workers to fill what agency managers say are critical shortages.
In addition, the agency is diverting $6.5 million to cover pay raises mandated by the administration -- an unexpected cost that is putting further pressure on harried agency managers.
But those managers say they are keeping an eye on the 2001 ball, which will begin rolling February 7, when President Clinton passes his budget request to Capitol Hill.
advertisement
