Substantial – but unspecified – ISS hardware and research changes ahead at NASA

At a recent meeting of the NASA Advisory Council, the Associate Administrator for the Office of Biological and Physical Research refered to substantial changes in the research aboard ISS. However NASA will not identify all of the payloads that are being affected.

Editor’s note: on 9 June I posted the following on NASA Watch:

According to charts presented by Office of Biological and Physical Research (OBPR) Associate Administrator Mary Kicza to the NASA Advisory Council yesterday, OBPR has “identified projects not aligned with [the] Exploration vision” and that this includes “9 or more more major hardware builds, 2 Express racks, 25 flight investigations, 50 ground based investigations” and that “[a] funding transition strategy [is] planned for investigations.”

Kicza did not specifically name any of the projects or hardware affected, but did say that options ranged from putting hardware on hold to outright termination and that these decisions would need to be coordinated with Congress before being implemented. Yesterday, after Kicza’s presentation, I asked the OBPR PAO representative to provide a list of the specific “major hardware builds”,”Express racks”,”flight investigations”, and “groundbased investigations” that have been identified per Kicza’s NAC presentation, and will post what PAO does (or does not) give me here on NASA Watch.

After Kicza’s presentation, I asked Dolores Beasley, the OBPR Public Affairs represenative, if I could get specific information on the payloads, experiments, and other associated projects that Mary Kicza referred to in her presentation.

On 15 June 2004 I received the following from Dolores Beasley:

“In Mary Kicza’s presentation to the NASA Advisory Committee (NAC) on Tuesday, June 8, she identified projects that are not aligned with the Vision for Space Exploration. For example, Ms. Kicza cited “nine or more major hardware builds.” These include the Low Temperature Microgravity Physics Facility (LTMPF) and eight experiment inserts associated with fundamental research in physics, biology, materials and combustion science. However, being identified as not aligned with the Vision does not necessarily mean that these projects will be cancelled because we are still addressing options with the NASA field centers through our budget process. For example, some of those inserts may be able to be modified to perform exploration-related research.

Affected projects will be determined with more certainty and announced publicly after completion of the fiscal year 2006 budget process and proper notification of Congress, which will take place over the summer. At the same time, OBPR is identifying opportunities for new work that is needed to implement The Vision for Space Exploration. If or when cancellations are required, the Office of Biological and Physical Research (OBPR) is committed to providing a significant transition period with associated funding for those affected. OBPR continues to issue competitive solicitations for new work, and current Principal Investigators (PIs) will be notified and invited to submit proposals for these new opportunities.”

Since this really did not answer the question I had asked – and simply rephrased what Mary Kicza had said the previous week, I requested some additional detail – specifically:

• Can you provide the specific names of the “eight experiment inserts associated with fundamental research in physics, biology, materials and combustion science”?
• What hardware was to be included in the 2 Express racks?
• Are all 25 flight investigations associated with the LTMPF? If not, what payloads/facilities are they associated with? And can you provide the specific names of these flight investigations?
• Are all 50 ground based investigations associated with the LTMPF? If not, what payloads/facilities are they associated with? And can you provide the specific names of these ground investigations?
• You said “Affected projects will be determined with more certainty” – and Mary said that specific things had been identified. Did she misspeak?

Dolores was unwilling to provide answers to my questions and said that there would be more information at some point in the future once Congress had been consulted.

Stay Tuned.

Reader comment: “The Fundamental Physics experiments with their necks on the block are:

1. DYNAMX (Robert Duncan, University of New Mexico, PI) — studying thermal conductivity near the lambda point
2. SUMO (J. Lipa, Stanford, PI) — a superconducting cavity oscillator clock in space
3. BEST (Guenter Ahlers, UC Santa Barbara, PI) — a study of boundary effects at the superfluid transition
4. MISTE (Martin Barmatz, JPL, PI) — a helium 3 critical point experiment
5. CP (David Goodstein, CalTech PI) — a helium superfluid transition experiment
6. PARCS, Primary Atomic Reference Clocks in Space (Ron Sullivan, Bill Phillips, NIST, PIs)

Also, the two major re-usable facilities, LTMPF and LCAP (laser cooled atomic physics) are also slated for cancellation. This represents the entire set of FP flight experiments in OBPR.”

Reader comment: “One EXPRESS payload that has been de-manifested from STS-114 is the SpaceDRUMS. It was replaced with a Human Research Facility rack.”

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