Letters Archive
SPECIAL: FROM JAMES GREEN, DIRECTOR PLANETARY SCIENCE DIVISION - CHANGES AT NASA HEADQUARTERS
If you have not heard, Alan Stern has resigned at NASA Headquarters. As Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, Alan was a tremendous driving force for positive change. He made many really tough decisions with a full commitment and stood by his people at all times. What an absolutely historic year this has been. I can only tell you that I thoroughly enjoyed working with Alan and that it has been the highlight in my very long NASA career. Alan is just outstanding in every way. I feel I have lost my best boss and gained a great friend at the same time. Although he won't be down the hall he will return to our planetary science community. Dr. Ed Weiler director of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, has been named as interim Associate Administrator. I have known Dr. Weiler for many years and I am delighted that he will be coming back to Headquarters. From my perspective, the Planetary Science Division continues to have a very bright and stable future with tremendously exciting science missions in all stages of development and operation. We have an outstanding staff of people who are committed to the path we are on and are ready to face each and every challenge ahead and that has not changed.
Thanks
Jim Green
Dr. Gordon McKay, 1945-2008
Dear Colleagues,
It is with deep sadness that we write on behalf of the Science Mission Directorate to mourn the untimely passing and celebrate the life and career of Dr. Gordon McKay. Beginning his career as a Ph.D. student on the first lunar samples returned to Earth by the Apollo astronauts and ending it in a role of exceptional leadership at a NASA review panel, Gordon devoted his life to public service and the advancement of scientific knowledge. Gordon was someone who epitomized being a civil servant.
Gordon's decades of research yielded numerous major contributions and international recognition in lunar and martian petrology and geochemistry, most notably in the area of petrogenesis - how the lunar rocks were formed. He began his formal association with NASA in 1977 as a two-year post-doc. He spent a year at Headquarters as a management fellow before permanently joining the NASA family at the Johnson Space Center.
Over his career, Gordon served on and led innumerable review panels, study teams, and working groups. In recent years, he also developed close working relationships with Japanese researchers, spending seven months at the University of Tokyo working on martian meteorites, another area of his expertise. Most recently, Gordon was assisting NASA with its future lunar and Mars exploration plans.
In addition to his scientific contributions, Gordon was a respected and well-loved manager for nearly two decades in the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division at JSC, fondly but firmly "herding cats" (as he often described it) to help NASA achieve its goals. Gordon also had a passionate commitment to educating and inspiring young scientists, mentoring dozens of interns and students over the years.
Gordon is survived by his wife and long-time JSC civil servant, Linda Uljon, and their two college-aged daughters. His brother, David McKay, and his sister-in-law Mary Fae are also JSC colleagues. Gordon made immeasurable impacts on planetary science. We extend our warmest appreciation and deepest sympathies to Gordon's family and friends for a life well led and a man we and the NASA family will miss.
Alan Stern and Jim Green
Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters
Planetary Division Selected Major Accomplishments in 2007 from Alan Stern's LPSC presentation
- Launched the Phoenix Mars lander to a landing in May 2008 and the Dawn asteroid orbiter to reach Vesta in 2011 and Ceres in 2015.
- Conducted the New Horizons Jupiter flyby on the way to Pluto (arrival in 2015).
- Completed the MSL Mars rover CDR, in prep for launch bin 2009.
- Selected two Mars Scout mission for Phase A; down-select will occur in late 2008.
- Selected the EPOXI (using Deep Impact) and NExT (using Stardust) comet missions for 2010 and 2011 flybys.
- Selected GRAIL as the next Discovery mission, to be launched in 2010/2011.
The Real Scoop on the Planetary R&A Science budget
James Green, Planetary Science Division
With the passage of the NASA budget it is now possible to provide you with some of the good news in the R&A portion of Planetary's budget. In a recent PEN Mark Sykes posted a high level overview of the FY08 Planetary Science Division's budget. The funds in the FY08 budget line stated as Planetary Science Research and Analysis ($146.6M) are not all the funds that are used in our ROSES call. This is because a number of elements (ie: the mission data analysis calls such as Cassini, Mars, Lunar, and the Discovery) actually come out of the mission budget lines. So in order to make a fair yearly comparison we just need to look at all the money that "goes out the door" for R&A before we can really get a sense of the trends. In addition, there were several years in which NASA book kept a variety of NASA Center support in the R&A budget line that makes those years nearly impossible to use for direct apples-to-apples comparison. So I have completed the simple analysis, starting with FY05, and here is what we actually spent each FY since then for the Planetary ROSES opportunities.
FY05: $168M, FY06: $155M, FY07: $142M
Now for this current fiscal year our PROJECTED funding for R&A is FY: $201M. You can do the math and easily see we have made some significant strides towards developing a healthy R&A program and I recognize that we need to do more. This increase has come from two sources. The first source is new funding for Lunar science research. In anticipating this new funding we have completed the LRO participating scientist selections, established a new NASA Lunar Science Institute at AMES with an open call for science and exploration nodes to be issued this year, and will soon be announcing the Lunar Advanced Science and Exploration Research (LASER) selections. The co-funding that will come from the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate for their portion of this Lunar activity has not been included in the projected total for FY08. The second source is that we have switched out some of our far-term technology investments for a gain in the R&A. I recognize that this is like robbing "Peter to pay Paul" and over the next several fiscal years I will have to address this more carefully but without a vital science research community we won't have missions or need the technology either. It's all a matter of balance.
I am very excited about our future. We have a number of fantastic activities this year to accomplish and I will continue to be amazed with each and every new planetary science discovery. With Alan at the helm we are making great progress. Hope to see you at the next LPSC or DPS meetings.