Agency provides key data on volcanoes, algae growth and weather, but the Texas senator wants Nasa to focus on space exploration and drop climate change study

Curtailing the Earth sciences mission of Nasa would deprive scientists of important data relating to volcanic eruptions, destructive algae growth, extreme weather events and much more, experts warned a week after a confrontation on Capitol Hill over the Nasa budget between Senator Ted Cruz and the agency director.



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At a routine budget hearing, Cruz challenged Nasa’s administrator, Charles Bolden, a former astronaut, to explain why funding for the agency’s Earth sciences mission had grown while funding for space exploration had shrunk.



“I would suggest that almost any American would agree that the core function of Nasa is to explore space,” Cruz said. “I am concerned that Nasa in the current environment has lost its full focus on that core mission.”



Bolden replied that a shift in emphasis away from manned space shuttle flights had produced savings in the area of exploration, but that in any case the observation and study of Earth was a central part of Nasa’s core mission.

“It is absolutely critical that we understand Earth’s environment, because this is the only place we have to live,” Bolden said. “We’ve got to take care of it. and the only way to take care of it is to know what’s happening.”

The exchange raised eyebrows in part because Cruz is a climate change skeptic, and his attack on Nasa’s efforts to study the Earth, which it carries out primarily through satellite technology, was perceived as an attack on the ability to document climate change. Cruz’s office did not reply to a request for comment.



But Cruz’s position could be seen as merely an extension of previous Republican attempts to reduce Nasa’s Earth sciences mission, which some have proposed should be shifted to another agency such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said Marcia S Smith, founder and editor of SpacePolicyOnline.com.



“It’s not new, it’s not something that Senator Cruz came up with,” Smith said. “He’s arguing what has been a Republican line for some time, which is that this should not be Nasa’s responsibility, because Nasa’s unique role is space exploration, so that should be its priority.”



Top Earth and space scientists warned, however, that the particular exploration of earth that Nasa carries out with satellites could not readily be replicated by a different agency.



“Nasa is an agency that has incredible expertise in satellites and in getting satellites into space,” said Margaret Leinen, vice-chancellor for marine sciences and director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California-San Diego. “And while Noaa does some of that, Nasa is the agency that, that’s their bread-and-butter. They are the experts.”



Leinen said Nasa satellites could observe deformations of the Earth on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis that could identify a seismic or volcanic event. “You can see how a volcano is bulging, and how dangerous it is,” she said. “Whether it’s moving or whether it’s quiet. You can look at the major faults in Los Angeles and other places, and see the accumulation of stress.

“One of Nasa’s satellites that looks at the oceans, called Aqua, has many different measuring instruments on it,” Leinen continued. “One of them, for example, allows us to look at the concentration of phytoplankton in the ocean, and what kind of phytoplankton are there. And one of the things that that’s used for is monitoring harmful algal blooms in coastal areas.

“It’s another great example of a basic research satellite that’s also doing work that’s essential to protecting us from harm.”



A Nasa satellite project allowed teams responding to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to track the movement of the oil into coastal waterways and monitor other impacts, according to a letter sent to Cruz by the American Geophysical Union, which represents 60,000 earth and space scientists.



The White House agreed in its latest budget request that Nasa’s earth sciences program was critical, calling for a 10% jump to $1.9bn for the program for fiscal year 2016, out of $18.5bn total for the agency. As chairman of the Senate subcommittee that oversees Nasa, Cruz can hold oversight hearings and originate legislation shaping Nasa, Smith has pointed out, but Cruz does not hold the agency’s purse strings, which belong to appropriations.



In any case, Cruz, for his general budget hawkishness, has not called for cuts to Nasa’s space exploration mission. Legislators from Texas tend to like space exploration, for one very good reason named the Lyndon B Johnson space center, which sprawls over 1,600 acres just outside Houston (as in, “Houston, we’ve had a problem”).



Space exploration is “what inspires little boys and little girls across this country”, Cruz said at last week’s hearing. “It’s what sets Nasa apart from any other agency, is the mission that has landed man on the moon, that has the potential to explore new worlds beyond our imagination.”



Bolden, the Nasa administrator, replied that space exploration would not be possible if rising sea levels sank launchpads in coastal areas such as Cape Canaveral, Florida.



“We can’t go anywhere if the Kennedy space center goes underwater, and we don’t know it,” Bolden said. “That’s understanding our environment.”



Leinen said it was important for Congress to promote understanding of how and why Nasa looks at the Earth.



“What’s concerning is that if people don’t understand the value of the Earth sciences mission, it can lead to cuts down the line,” she said. “It can lead to – in the same way that a misunderstanding in any part of life can lead to consequences – what’s concerning is that this could lead to a misunderstanding within Congress about the importance of that valuable mission.”

