SPACE.com -- NASA Chief: Mars Troubles Not Due to Lack of Funding

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	NASA Chief: Mars Troubles Not Due to Lack of Funding By Craig Linder States News Service posted: 07:09 pm ET 20 June 2000

By Craig Linder

WASHINGTON, June 20 NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin told the House Science Committee Tuesday that the space agency's recent loss of two missions to Mars was not the result of a tight budget at the space agency.

"The Mars failures have spurred discussion that NASA may be under-funded," he said. "I wish to make clear that NASA has not asked the President to approve an [increased] budget report for 2001, nor do we desire to do so."

Instead, Goldin said, NASA hopes to prevent future mission failures by improving training and internal procedures not by spending more money on missions and resources.

"Many actions we are taking will incur negligible or modest costs, and in instances where we identify a need for correction, additional funding may be the action of last resort."

In 1999, NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter was lost en route to the Red Planet and a lander was lost upon entering the planet's atmosphere.

The Young Report concluded that the most likely point of failure for the Mars Polar Lander was during its final descent to the Martian surface. Findings indicate that a signal from one of the lander's legs might have mistakenly reported that it had touched down, which would have shut off the landing rockets.

Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Director Ed Stone told the panel Tuesday that some revised procedures were already in place at the Pasadena, California laboratory, among them the creation of a Mars-program office and a systems-management office at JPL.

Committee members largely praised NASAs efforts in recent years, but questioned the agencys oversight of the Mars missions.

Questions about responsiveness

Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin), the committee chairman, asked Goldin about three instances where scientists involved with the Mars missions claimed that they had brought concerns about the projects to NASA Headquarters, only to see their concerns ignored.

Goldin said that he did not remember the specifics of each situation, but said that he often rejected requests for additional project funds.

"On many occasions people came into my office and I threw them out on their heads when they wanted more money," he said. In retrospect, though, Goldin said that the Mars-mission budgets were indeed stretched too thinly.

Retired Lockheed Martin executive Tom Young and retired JPL Chief Engineer John Casani told the Science Committee in April that a lack of funds and personnel at the space agency caused NASA to cut corners on the Mars Polar Lander and Mars Climate Orbiter programs.

According to Young and Casani, the Climate Orbiter was lost when Lockheed Martin failed to convert English measurement units into metric units in calculations and the Polar Lander crashed possibly due to an incorrect line of computer code in its software that resulted in a premature engine shutoff. In their April testimony, Young and Casani said that more resources at NASA could have allowed the agency to catch the mistakes.

Moon researchers: Enough with the reviews

Goldin and Stone were joined Tuesday by Alan Binder, the principle investigator of the Lunar Investigator Mission, and retired Air Force Col. Pedro L. Rustan, the former mission manager for the Clementine moon mission.

Rustan and Binder both disagreed with the portion of the Young Report that called for increased funds and oversight for NASAs deep-space missions.

"NASAs programs already have too many reviews and most of these reviews rob critical time from the mission while adding little value," Rustan said. "Adding more money for more management reviews, additional oversight or to add new capability after the design has been finalized, is counterproductive."

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