PLANETARY EXPLORATION NEWSLETTER
Volume 2, Number 2 (January 5, 2008)

PEN Website: http://planetarynews.org
Editor: Mark V. Sykes 
Co-Editors: Matt Balme, Nic Richmond
Email: pen_editor at psi.edu

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SPECIAL: THE REAL SCOOP ON THE PLANETARY R&A SCIENCE BUDGET 
- JAMES GREEN, NASA SMD PLANETARY SCIENCE DIVISION DIRECTOR 

With the passage of the NASA budget it is now possible to provide you 
with some of the good news in the R&A portion of Planetary's budget. 
In a recent PEN [Vol. 1, Nr. 37, December 30, 2007] Mark Sykes posted a 
high level overview of the FY08 Planetary Science Division's budget. 
The funds in the FY08 budget line stated as Planetary Science Research 
and Analysis ($146.6M) are not all the funds that are used in our ROSES 
call. This is because a number of elements (ie: the mission data 
analysis calls such as Cassini, Mars, Lunar, and the Discovery) 
actually come out of the mission budget lines. So in order to make a 
fair yearly comparison we just need to look at all the money that 'goes 
out the door' for R&A before we can really get a sense of the trends. 
In addition, there were several years in which NASA book kept a variety 
of NASA Center support in the R&A budget line that makes those years 
nearly impossible to use for direct apples-to-apples comparison. So I 
have completed the simple analysis, starting with FY05, and here is 
what we actually spent each FY since then for the Planetary ROSES 
opportunities.
 
FY05: $168M 
FY06: $155M 
FY07: $142M
 
Now for this current fiscal year our PROJECTED funding for R&A is 

FY08: $201M.

You can do the math and easily see we have made some significant 
strides towards developing a healthy R&A program and I recognize that 
we need to do more. This increase has come from two sources. The first 
source is new funding for Lunar science research. In anticipating this 
new funding we have completed the LRO participating scientist 
selections, established a new NASA Lunar Science Institute at AMES with 
an open call for science and exploration nodes to be issued this year, 
and will soon be announcing the Lunar Advanced Science and Exploration 
Research (LASER) selections. The co-funding that will come from the 
Exploration Systems Mission Directorate for their portion of this Lunar 
activity has not been included in the projected total for FY08. The 
second source is that we have switched out some of our far-term 
technology investments for a gain in the R&A. I recognize that this is 
like robbing 'Peter to pay Paul' and over the next several fiscal years 
I will have to address this more carefully but without a vital science 
research community we won't have missions or need the technology 
either. It's all a matter of balance.
 
I am very excited about our future. We have a number of fantastic 
activities this year to accomplish and I will continue to be amazed 
with each and every new planetary science discovery. With Alan at the 
helm we are making great progress. Hope to see you at the next LPSC or 
DPS meetings. 

[Editor Note: FY08 NASA Planetary Science Budget information posted at
http://planetarypolicy.org/fy08_analysis.html has been modified to 
include Jim Green's numbers.]

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