Dr. Colleen Hartman, Director of Solar System Exploration at NASA, has issued a Dear Colleague letter revising NASA’s earlier decision and has restored funding for radar astronomy at Arecibo for the current fiscal year. Her letter is quoted below:

Dear Colleague,

After five years without any increase for inflation, the Supporting Research and Technology (SR&T) Programs of NASA’s Office of Space Science have secured a modest FY 02 increase. This increase, while welcome and necessary, cannot undo the effects of the previous period of static funding.

The current budget for the Near Earth Objects Observations (NEOO) program faces some especially difficult choices. Out of the entire FY 02 NEOO budget of $3.55M, a full $3M is committed to Search and Follow-up observational programs designed to discover large NEOs or to obtain follow-up astrometry of these objects (to improve our knowledge of their orbits).

This priority responds to a Congressional imperative that the detection rate of Earth-orbit “crossing asteroids must be increased substantially” (HR Report 105-610, 105th Congress 2d session. p. 30,1990), and to NASA’s own 1998 commitment to achieving the goal of detecting and cataloging 90% of NEOs larger than 1 km in diameter within ten years”

S-band radar planetary observation efforts at Arecibo remain a valuable part of this commitment, and will continue to be funded with $400K in FY 02. That support includes the cost of turbine fuel, observation planning and operation of the S-band radar system, as well as ephemerides predictions.

In order to bring these efforts into line with other elements of the NEOO program, Arecibo’s S-band radar observations will be subject from now on to peer-review evaluation. Discussions will also be held with the National Science Foundation to determine whether that agency might provide additional funding for these observations.

signed,
Dr. Colleen N. Hartman
Director, Solar System Exploration
Office of Space Science

The DPS applauds this action and is grateful for the restoration of this most important program. The DPS is also highly supportive of Dr. Hartman’s suggestion to broaden the support base for ground-based radar astronomy with the NSF.

The DPS is the world’s largest professional organization dedicated to the exploration of the solar system.