(Biological and Physical Research) House Rpt.107-740 VA-HUD Appropriations Bill 2003
BIOLOGICAL AND PHYSICAL RESEARCH
Within the Biological and Physical Research portion of this account,
the Committee recommends $854,200,000, a net increase of $11,900,000 to
the budget request.
Within the amount provided, the Committee directs NASA to establish a
floor of funding support for the National Space Biomedical Research
Institute at $30,000,000 in fiscal year 2003.
The Committee remains committed to a healthy and productive Materials
Science research program. This program has undergone multiple reviews by
the National Research Council. It has also produced a backlog of
well-respected investigators whose experiments have undergone multiple
peer reviews, certifying that they will provide useful scientific
returns that can only be obtained in the microgravity environment of
space.
The Committee is concerned that recent changes to the Materials
Science program have jeopardized the ability of the International Space
Station to support a robust materials science research program.
Therefore, the Committee expects NASA to maintain its commitment to a
healthy materials research program, which at a minimum includes the
timely completion of the Materials Science Research Rack–1, its
experiment modules and module inserts, and the planned, peer-reviewed
materials investigations that were to utilize this facility.
The Committee recommends the following adjustments to the budget
request:
1. An increase of $4,000,000 for the Space Radiation program at Loma
Linda University Hospital.
2. An increase of $1,000,000 for Canisius College for multi-user
scientific equipment in life sciences.
3. An increase of $1,000,000 for the Institute for Proteomic and
Nanobiotechnology at Northwestern University.
4. An increase of $400,000 for the Center for Research and Training
in gravitational biology at North Carolina State University.
5. An increase of $5,000,000 for the National Center of Excellence in
Bioinformatics in Buffalo, New York.
6. An increase of $8,000,000 for procurement of animal and plant
habitats for the international space station.
7. A decrease of $11,200,000 from the Generations program. The
Committee recognizes the value of the research being proposed through
the Generations program, but finds the program to unaffordable at this
time given shortages in funding for equipment for the International
Space Station.
8. The Committee notes that NASA’s 15 Commercial Space Centers are
all under the management of the Office of Biological and Physical
Research and directs NASA to support Centers at a funding level of
$18,500,000, an increase of $3,700,000 to the budget request.
7. An increase of $900,000 for High-Energy Photonics Instrumentation
at the University of Alabama, Huntsville.
8. An increase of $7,500,000 for development of a lightweight carrier
pallet to support the Hubble Space Telescope program. The recent success
of the Hubble servicing mission has underscored the continued importance
of the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA’s plan for HST has been to
discontinue servicing missions after 2004 in order to create a funding
wedge for the next generation space telescope (NGST), the community’s
highest priority, and to return HST to earth in 2010. Although this
scenario creates an important funding wedge, it also leads to a
significant probability that HST will degrade over the intervening
six-year period and become inoperable well before 2010. This gap may be
so long that HST archival data alone may not sustain a productive
scientific community. The Committee directs that NASA carry out an
in-depth study of possible alternatives to the 2010 return mission that
would increase the probability of operating HST until NGST becomes
available. This study should address the possibility of an additional
servicing mission, SM5, and as an alternative, a final servicing mission
in 2007 in lieu of the 2010 mission that would include a means of
disposing of HST other than by Shuttle return. This study should address
the relative costs of such scenarios, the potential scientific benefits,
and the mission constraints that will need to be considered for the 2010
return mission.
9. An increase of $19,900,000 to the Mars program to cover recent
cost increases. This funding is derived through a decrease in funding
for the flight projects building, a cancelled project at the Jet
Propulsion Lab.
10. A decrease of $10,000,000 from the Nuclear Electric Propulsion
program and a decrease of $7,000,000 from the Nuclear Power System
program.
