Reuters:After
three years of continual cuts in its budget, US research on the
International Space Station may be completely killed off to fix
a $100 million shortfall in NASA's budget. When ISS was
originally proposed twenty years ago, nearly 27 hours of
astronaut time per week was set aside by NASA to conduct
scientific experiments. However, since ISS has had three
instead of the proposed seven astronauts in orbit at any one
time, the amount of time set aside for science has dropped to
2.5 hours per week. Delays and cost over-runs has also led to
many of the proposed scientific instruments for ISS to remain
stuck on the ground. A $350 million cut in NASA's life science
budget last year helped bring the research program to the point
of collapse. Fixing the budget shortfall by cancelling the
remainging ISS research budget would bring NASA's proposed
Moon-Mars program back on track say NASA officials.
