A few words on NASA-ese

There’s been a bit of a kerfuffle in the news the last couple of days about whether or not one or both of the wildly successful Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs) will be turned off due to budget problems at NASA. This arises out of a directive that came from NASA whereby all currently operating flight missions in extended phases at Mars are being cut back to pay for overguides on the new Mars Science Laboratory lander, scheduled to launch next year.

Yesterday, on the one hand, you’ve got the MER mission’s principal investigator (PI) saying that if he’s to absorb $4M in cuts to his mission (and $8M next year), he’s going to have to put one of the rovers in hibernation and lay off part of the science team who do much the daily work of planning rover operations and analysis tasks.

On the other hand, NASA responded quickly, saying that “…the cancellation of the Mars Exploration Rovers is not under consideration…shutting down one of the rovers is not an option”.

Something that is not usually appreciated by the public at large, and even many scientists in the planetary exploration community, is that wording is everything in these situations. The MER PI referred to suspending science operations and shutting down a rover - he didn’t use the word “cancel”, whereas the NASA spokesman did. There is a very specific process for canceling a mission at NASA, so when someone claims that a mission (or instrument on a mission) is or is not “being cancelled”, the first thing you have to look at is what is being done. You don’t need to cancel a mission to make operations so difficult that science can’t get done, or worse, that mistakes (arising from inexperience or understaffing) kill the mission. All you need to do is reduce the mission’s funding, which is what was being suggested this week for all currently operating missions. So MER is not the only mission at risk here - also at risk is the extended operation of the Mars Odyssey orbiter mission, which just this week made news with a paper in Science on possible chloride salts on Mars.

Interestingly, today the story has changed. NASA’s Administrator apparently was unaware of the directive that came from within the Science Mission Directorate, and has rescinded it, saying that the rovers will not be shut down. The bad news, however, is that the proposed cuts to that mission will now have to be absorbed elsewhere within the Mars Program - that may mean the end of operations for the very successful, if less attention-getting, Mars Odyssey mission, and it may threaten the extension of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter next year.

The lesson here is that it’s important to parse the language the players in these little dramas are using. Often they sound like they’re talking about the same thing, but they may not be - they may just be using whatever words allow them to sound most reasonable.

~ by sandrift on March 25, 2008.