Maybe you have found the information in your December Astronomy magazine, or maybe in the national magazines, or maybe you received the news through a Planetary Society email as I did yesterday. There is a concerted effort to force science missions out of operations at NASA. Three of the highest-ranking scientists at NASA have left the agency in recent days. Two were routed from their positions for being outspoken opponents of the Bush Administration policy regarding the science budget. A third resigned after the two were outed. This info is from the news column in Astronomy.

Please go to The Planetary Society website and mill around a little bit. It isn't hard to see the areas where my topic originates from. Get your information from there, and be aware that there is a petition that TPS is taking signatures on that will go to the Bush people who have actually RE-WRITTEN the NASA mission statement. There is an active campaign underway to remove science missions, both current and future, from the NASA budget. Funding is proposed to be slashed to a 1% increase per year level, and we must do whatever we can to help keep this from happening.

The public support for the Hubble Space Telescope swayed the admin and the Congress to restore the funding for the next servicing mission which is now scheduled for late this year or early '08, and public support is needed on an ever higher level now that these latest fiascoes are becoming widely known. Go to the petition to Bush directly by clicking on "petition to Bush" in this sentence. Whether you are a Planetary Society member or not, they have opened up their petition to everyone, everywhere, so that everyone has a way to let these, these, people, know how we feel about this effort to ban science from our future.

You can help! It is up to, and open to, everyone in the US who has an interest in seeing science missions to the planets, even science missions about our Earth, returned to their proper status and importance. Signing the petition is your, and MY way of saying that we don't like what's happening in the halls of NASA. Make a difference. Sign the petition. Re-send THIS message to everyone you know asking them to do the same.

This is an important issue. I didn't have to re-join TPS in order to voice my opinion. It won't cost you anything either, but being a Planetary Society member keeps your voice heard AND the space missions developed and funded by TPS going strong. The Planetary Society is the ONLY private space advocate group that is directly involved in space exploration without any governmental help. Consider joining when your at their sites linked above.

Thanks everyone.......
Bob