THE LAST EXPLORERS

WILL THE BUDGET AXE DROP ON OUR INVALUABLE PLANETARY
EXPLORATION PROGRAM?

Budgetary politics have jeopardized the survival of Cassini, the spacecraft
intended to journey to Saturn.

Planetary exploration is the jewel of the U.S. space program-and we are
effectively opting out of it. Over the past 30 years, we've mounted
increasingly sophisticated missions that have thrilled onlookers around the
world. Fragile spacecraft traveling hundreds of millions of miles through space
have beamed back to us the most exciting photographs in history: the tumbled
landscape and pink sky of Mars, the tortured surface of Venus, the glorious
turbulence of Jupiter, a newly discovered ring around Neptune.

We're now ready to go up against the deepest questions of the ages: Where did
life come from? What forces have shaped our planet? And are we alone?

But instead, this miraculous undertaking, beset by incessant budget cuts and
funding delays, now faces the distressing possibility of stagnation, stasis, or
even slow death.

The latest victim is CRAF-Cassini. The designers intended the CRAF (Comet
Rendezvous Asteroid Flyby) spacecraft to fly with a comet for two or three years
to observe how the comet changes as it approaches the sun. Meanwhile, plans
called for the Cassini craft to orbit Saturn for several years and to drop the
European Huygens probe into the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan.

But in the budget for fiscal year 1992, Congress put a cap on CRAF-Cassini
funding; if the program exceeded that cap, the CRAF portion would have to be
dropped, Still worse, the budget request for fiscal year 1993 that President
Bush recently sent to Congress included no money at all for CRAF. Thus, CRAF
faces cancellation unless Congress decides to appropriate funds for it-an
exceedingly unlikely proposition. Sadly, with CRAF gone, Cassini's survival
looks uncertain.

Meanwhile, the Magellan spacecraft continues to do dazzling work, mapping the
surface of Venus in exquisite detail. This superb spacecraft could easily scan
the surface for months or even years to come. But that won't happen-because the
Magellan program, having met its goals, runs out of money on October 1, 1992.
NASA has scraped together enough cash to continue receiving a portion of the
data stream until May 1993. But after that, this unprecedented scientific
opportunity will go to waste.

Aside from Mars Observer, CRAF-Cassini was the only major solar-system probe
that we've begun in the last ten years. We can't send up any others for at
least a decade because we simply don't have any others. If missions like these
die or sacrifice crucial content, the best planetary scientists will leave the
field: Why waste the best years of your career waiting for a program that the
nation won't support?

And yet it's such a bargain! In the past ten years, our planetary spacecraft
have explored some 50 new worlds-at a cost of mere pennies per world for each
American. The annual budget for planetary exploration runs only about $450
million-less than 5 percent of NASA's entire budget, which itself pales beside
the budgets of most federal agencies.

And irony of ironies, planetary exploration has no heavyweight champion in
Congress because ifs so cheap! Solar-system probes don't give rise to
multibillion dollar contracts-so nobody goes to bat for them at budget time.

Meanwhile, other countries take solar-system exploration seriously as the
magnificent undertaking it is. (Sad but true, our space-exploration triumphs
receive far more media coverage overseas than here at home.) The European Space
Agency has reactivated Giotto, the spacecraft it dispatched to Halley's Comet in
1986 as part of the international "Halley Armada" (the United States dropped
out), and sent it on to an unprecedented second rendezvous, this time with a
comet called Grigg-Skjellerup. Similarly, Japan recently sent its first
spacecraft to the moon and has turned its attention to preparing a Mars
exploration mission.

Americans like to call themselves pioneers, but our country shamefully neglects
the truest modern manifestation of the pioneering spirit. Let's not repeat our
sad retreat from Apollo's accomplishments. This time, let's value our triumphs
as they deserve and carry them forward into a future worthy of their past.