When he added the phrase “to understand and protect our home planet” to NASA’s mission statement in 2002, then–NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe said, “We have come to understand that the only way to really comprehend our climate and to protect the scarce resources of our little blue planet is to look at the Earth as a single, whole system.” O’Keefe left NASA in 2004, and now the phrase “to understand and protect our home planet” is gone as well.
In February 2006, NASA rewrote the mission statement without consulting with its scientists, New York Times writer Andrew Revkin reported. The new mission statement, included in the space agency’s fiscal year 2007 budget proposal, says, “To pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery, and aeronautics research.”
A NASA spokesman said the change reflected President Bush’s focus on returning humans to the Moon and eventually to Mars. The lack of internal...
