On Sat, 21 Jul 2001 16:01:10
Bruce Moomaw wrote:
>
>Alan Stern has confirmed the decision made by the Senate's space
>subcommittee to try to rescue the Pluto 2004 mission: "The Senate bill will
>(in present form) fund an Outer Planets Program line, make PKB [Pluto/Kuiper
>Belt] its first mission, ask NASA to consider competing Europa Orbiter the
>same way, and set aside money to begin PKB at the start of Fiscal Year 2002.
>I do not know when the full Senate Appropriations Committee will take this
>up, nor when the House-Senate conference will be... My gut feeling is that
>the only thing standing between us and a funded PKB project now is the
>House-Senate conference. What an amazing 9 months it's been since Pluto
>Express' cancellation." He also reports that the Solar System Exploration
>Subcommittee -- which was meeting in Washington when the news came -- broke
>into applause.
>
>Judging from a note on NASA Watch, this was -- as I suspected -- largely the
>work of Sen. Mikulski, who lambasted NASA for allowing "overrun after
>overrun after overrun" on the Space Station at the expense of NASA's other
>spending, as a result of "a culture of overindulgence". Th:e Senate
>subcommittee also placed much sharper borders on the additional amount of
>funding allowed for the Station than the House has done. (More details on
>that shortly.)
>
In a Dutch (Kuiper was Dutch after all) newspaper I read today the Pluto 2004 mission
is off again. I hope the journalist overhere in Holland was misinformed.
Can anyone please confirm the Pluto 2004 mission is still on? (It's what you could
call a "digital mission": on - off - on - off - on ...)
Kind regards,
Gert van den Heuvel
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