Fresh Out Hires include those 3 years out of post doctoral fellowships:

The average age of NASA employees is now 47 and the average age of new hires has been ~40. NASA has decided to try to make half of all new civil servant hires "freshouts" which has been defined as those who got their last degree or completed their post-doctoral fellowship (e.g., an NPP) within the last three years.  This could really change the demographics of NASA and have profound implications.  For more information see "Rebalancing NASA’s Workforce" from open NASA at http://www.opennasa.com/2009/04/02/balancing-nasas-workforce/

Obama Wants Review OF NASA's Core Mission

Reporting on the testimony in front of Congress by NASA's acting Administrator Chris Scolese, Rob Coppinger writes in "NASA reconsiders outpost as 2020 Moon goal" that "President Barack Obama wants a review of the space agency's core mission and this will take place once his administrator candidate is appointed..." Still no word on who the new administrator will be. For more information see: http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2009/04/30/325885/nasa-reconsiders-outpost-as-2020-moon-goal.html

Below are excerpts from the seventeenth annual calculation of the Science News metric by Greg Davidson, Dr. Luke Sollitt and Justin Reuter.   These are a measure of NASA contributions to worldwide scientific discovery and technological achievement. This metric runs through the 36-year period from 1973 to 2008, and covers all fields of science.

NASA’s 9.2% contribution to worldwide scientific discoveries in 2008 is the fourth-highest in the 36 years covered by the Science News metric

• Only 2.1% comes from spacecraft now in their prime mission (see analysis, below)
  

WMAP produced 1.3% of discoveries

• WMAP discoveries included the so-called “dark flowâ€�, which seems to carry galaxies toward a point in the southern sky, and a more precise age for the universe, from which scientists can infer the existence of a vast sea of neutrinos.
  

Hubble produced 1.1% of discoveries

• Discoveries include the first image of an extrasolar planet, and the detection of CO2 in an exoplanet’s atmosphere (1.1%)
• For the third time since 1993 (and the second year in a row), HST was not NASA’s most productive mission.
  

Cassini produced 0.7% of worldwide discoveries 

• Cassini observations showed the presence of at least one hydrocarbon lake on Titan.  
  

A strong year for Space Science included smaller mission contributions, and a new discovery for Voyager 

• Voyager 2 reached the termination shock, shedding light on the structure of the heliosphere.
• Swift had the earliest detection yet of a supernova after its onset.
• Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope has provided results hinting at the nature of quantum gravity.
• MESSENGER discovered the origin of Mercury’s magnetic field, and detected early volcanic activity and surface composition.
  

NASA Earth Science produced 1.4% of discoveries

• The ARGOS satellite network, consisting of NOAA satellites 15-18 (and a foreign satellite) was used to document the flight of a bird from Alaska to New Zealand, the longest single bird flight recorded.
• GISS scientists showed that non-natural effects of climate change results in a variety of disruptions in nature.
• NOAA GOES satellite data showed that peak winds in the largest storms have been getting more powerful over the last 30 years.
  

NASA’s non-mission science produced 1.3% of world-wide science

• NASA Astrobiology efforts resulted in a variety of discoveries, including a new species of bacteria which lives 3 km below the Earth’s surface, the evolution of minerals on planetary bodies, including that some minerals arise due to biological processes, and that as much as 70% of Earth’s microbial life actually lives on the ocean floor.
• Other non-mission science contributions include the observation of a sudden transient plume of water off of the West Coast of the US with pH so low as to disrupt sea creatures’ ability to form shells.
  

NASA’s science return coming mostly from missions not in the prime phase

• Most of this (5.5%) comes from spacecraft which are now operating beyond their prime mission lifetimes; 1.3% comes from non-flight project science, and only 2.4% comes from spacecraft in their prime mission phase
  
  • The 2.4% prime mission science comes from MESSENGER, Fermi, Phoenix and STEREO.
    
    • The STEREO prime mission ended in October 2008.
    • The Phoenix mission has ended.
      
• In the continuation of a trend for the third year in a row, the largest contribution comes from extended missions.
  

In an article for the Space Review (11/17), editor Jeff Foust wrote about two "new alternatives" for the Vision for Space Exploration, one laid out by the Center for American Progress Action Fund and the other by the Planetary Society. The former argued that "the goals of the Vision do not match the resources allocated to it" and said "the new administration immediately create a commission...and make recommendations for short- and long-term actions." Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society, "declined...to give an estimate of the level of funding that NASA needed to carry out this revised approach, other than to support the levels of NASA funding that have been authorized by Congress." Friedman said he hopes that the new Congress will hold hearings on the topic next year.

Read the full text of the article at http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1252/1

Manned Asteroid Missions Proposed As Faster Springboard To Mars. A large group of former NASA managers and planetary scientists is proposing sweeping changes to the Bush administration's Vision for Space Exploration that would replace a human return to the moon with manned missions to asteroids and other locations much farther from Earth.

Read the full text of the article at www.aviationweek.com

The September 19 issue of Science has an interesting piece entitled 'Steering Science from a High Altitude' where they discuss how in addition to peer review "behind the scenes, another group of scientists holds considerable sway over what research gets funded and what does not..." not just at NASA but also at NIH, NSF etc.