NASA鈥檚 ability to cooperate with the space agencies of other countries is sharply limited by US security regulations, top space scientists told a US congressional committee on Wednesday.
The scientists were speaking at a hearing of the US House of Representatives鈥 Committee on Science and Technology in Washington, DC.
Using a set of rules called ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations), the US government restricts the exchange of information and hardware that could potentially have military applications.
Advertisement
But scientists speaking to the committee said it is inappropriately hampering international cooperation on space science missions. 鈥淚t has become a nightmare and is probably the single biggest impediment to international collaboration in the science programme,鈥 said Lennard Fisk of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who chairs the National Research Council鈥檚 Space Studies Board.
He warned that not cooperating with other countries could leave the US behind in space exploration. 鈥淚f we choose not to, there are alignments that will take place among other nations,鈥 he said. 鈥淲e could find ourselves in a space race with the world, and that would probably be an unwise position.鈥
Those concerns were echoed by other scientists at the hearing, such as Garth Illingworth of the University of California in Santa Cruz, who chairs NASA鈥檚 Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee. 鈥淲e are the ones that lose out as much as anyone else, or maybe more so,鈥 he said.
The congressional committee members expressed concern about the issue, although some cautioned that the needs of science had to be balanced against security concerns about the spread of some space technology. 鈥淎s we all know, the technology can be [used] not just for peaceful purposes,鈥 said Ken Calvert of California.
Shut down
Concerns were also raised about the possible shutdown of the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, which is used to track potentially dangerous asteroids. The National Science Foundation (NSF) is cancelling its funding for the observatory, which may shut down in 2011 as a result (see World class radio telescopes face closure).
鈥淚 think it does a great disservice to try to shut something like that down,鈥 said California congressman Dana Rohrabacher.
Alan Stern, head of NASA鈥檚 Science Mission Directorate, replied that the observatory鈥檚 operation was out of the space agency鈥檚 hands. 鈥淭hat really is an NSF issue,鈥 he said.
Joseph Burns of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who helps manage Arecibo, said Arecibo鈥檚 radar transmission abilities, which allow it to track and characterise potentially dangerous asteroids, could be shut down by October 2007 if no new funding materialises. The massive antenna could still passively observe celestial objects at radio wavelengths, however.
Burns noted that NASA used to provide the funding needed to run the observatory, but had passed the burden to NSF in recent years.
鈥淭he NSF now says, 鈥楬ey, that鈥檚 not our problem, we鈥檙e shifting it back to NASA,'鈥 he said. 鈥淔rom the standpoint of the science community, we know it鈥檚 a unique facility, and we don鈥檛 care who funds it, but it needs to be funded.鈥
