Pete Aldridge Well, Good Afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen, and Welcome to the Fifth and Final Public Hearing of the President’S Commission on Moon, Mars, and Beyond
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The President’s Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy PUBLIC HEARING Asia Society 725 Park Avenue New York, NY Monday, May 3, and Tuesday, May 4, 2004 Pete Aldridge Well, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the fifth and final public hearing of the President’s Commission on Moon, Mars, and Beyond. I think I can speak for everyone here when I say that the time period since this Commission was appointed and asked to produce a report has elapsed at the speed of light. At least it seems that way. Since February, we’ve heard testimonies from a broad range of space experts, the Mars rovers have won an expanded audience of space enthusiasts, and a renewed interest in space science has surfaced, calling for a new generation of space educators. In less than a month, we will present our findings to the White House. The Commission is here to explore ways to achieve the President’s vision of going back to the Moon and on to Mars and beyond. We have listened and talked to experts at four previous hearings—in Washington, D.C.; Dayton, Ohio; Atlanta, Georgia; and San Francisco, California—and talked among ourselves and we realize that this vision produces a focus not just for NASA but a focus that can revitalize US space capability and have a significant impact on our nation’s industrial base, and academia, and the quality of life for all Americans. As you can see from our agenda, we’re talking with those experts from many, many disciplines, including those outside the traditional aerospace arena. And before I go any further, let me introduce my fellow Commissioners, and I’ll begin on the audience’s right. I think that’s right. Audience’s left, my right. Carly Fiorina serves as the Chairwoman and she’s Chief Executive Officer of Hewlett-Packard, which she joined in July of 1999. Her roots are deep in technology and she’s served in senior executive leadership positions at AT&T and Lucent technologies. Michael Jackson is a senior vice president for AECOM Technology Corporation. He is a former U.S. Department of Transportation Deputy Secretary, and was instrumental in the early formation of the Transportation Safety Administration. Dr. Laurie Leshin is the Director of Arizona State University’s Center for Meteorite Studies and the Dee and John Whiteman Dean’s Distinguished Professor of Geological Sciences at the University of Arizona. General Les Lyles was in the Air Force for more than 35 years, rising from the Air Force ROTC program to become a four-star general and the commander of Air Force Materiel Command; in 1 that preretirement position, General Lyles was responsible for the U.S. Air Force research and development community. Dr. Paul Spudis is a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory outside of Baltimore, Maryland. His specialty is the geology of the Moon. He has also studied the geology of Mars, Mercury, and many other worlds. Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist and the Frederick P. Rose director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City. He recently served on the President’s Aerospace Commission, which made recommendations to Congress and related government agencies on how to improve the health and future of this industry in the interest of the American economy and national security. Retired Congressman Robert Walker is the chairman and chief executive officer of the Wexler and Walker Public Policy Associates, a firm specializing in telecommunications and technology issues. Bob served in the U.S. Congress from 1977 to 1997, representing his home state of Pennsylvania. And while in Congress, he was chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee with NASA oversight. He, too, served on the recent Aerospace Commission as its chair. Dr. Maria Zuber is the E. A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and leads the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. Maria has been involved in more than a half a dozen NASA planetary missions aimed at mapping the Moon, Mars, Mercury, and several asteroids. Next to Maria is Steve Schmidt, our Commission’s executive director. Steve is a special assistant to the NASA administrator and our federally designated official for this advisory committee. It is important, I think, to review the process this Commission will follow and has been following. We’ve been appointed by the President to make recommendations on how to implement the space vision set out on January 14th of this year. It is our job now to recommend the most important strategies or steps to accomplish this vision. This is a sustained journey; more than 10 presidential terms are covered by this vision. We’re listening to experts in public along with drawing upon our own expertise to generate the plan. I envision that we will select maybe 10 strategies to recommend what we believe will lead to putting us back on to the Moon and on to Mars. In addition to experts, we’re listening to the American public, the ultimate customer for this vision. Through our website, we’re accepting comments from people around the world who want to be heard on this subject. This final hearing is noteworthy because it’s the first to focus on one of the significant missions within the vision, namely, the building of international partnerships in space. For our first panel, we’re pleased to welcome three members of the international space community. 2 Daniel Sacotte is the director of the European Space Agency and is responsible for space exploration. Since November, he’s served as director of human spaceflight, microgravity and exploration programs. Mr. Sacotte is also a member of the board of trustees of the International Academy of Astronautics and a chevalier of the Legion of Honor. We’re pleased to welcome Mr. Kyoshi Higuchi, executive director of JAXA, the non-acronym brand-new name of the Japanese Space Agencies. Prior to his post, Mr. Higuchi was the director of the Space Shuttle Utilization Office and the Space Station Program Office. We look forward to his wide-ranging perspective. Philippe Berterottière is Senior Vice President–Sales/Marketing and Customer Programs for Arianespace as well as being a member of the executive committee. His 30-year perspective on the international space business will be much appreciated. Mr. Sacotte, I believe you’re going to be first. Welcome. Welcome you all. Daniel Sacotte Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, it is a distinct honor for the European Space Agency to appear before this Commission today. We appreciate this opportunity to contribute to your reflection about the way forward for the U.S. space exploration vision. ESA would like in particular to congratulate our American colleagues for innovating space exploration as a rank at the highest level in your country. This vision and the subsequent implementation by NASA will have a very positive influence for all the world’s future space activities. My testimony today will be made up of four parts. First one will be a brief description of ESA. Second one, what are our ongoing and planned activities in space exploration? Then our international cooperation. And at the end our European vision for international space exploration. Starting by a brief description of ESA, probably you know that it’s a little bit emphatic but we consider that ESA is European space. We have developed an agreement with the European Union and we have now a framework agreement with the European Union that recognizes our role and the role we will have to play together between European Space Agency and European Union. European Space Agency is an intergovernmental organization with a special agreement with European Union. We have 17 member states. That means a lot of difficulties because playing with 17 presidents is far more difficult than to play with only one. So, it will be one of our difficulties. Our budget is on the order of $3 billion every year. And the difference of NASA, ESA is active and is the [body and shadow?] space in all the field of activities, being launcher, being telecommunication, being Earth observation, and also human spaceflight and exploration. What are our ongoing activities in the field of space exploration? We have in the field of exploration huge and important and comprehensive program for robotic exploration, mainly devoted to scientific goals and also for technology. We have Mars Express, Europe’s first mission to Mars, that was launched by a Soyuz vehicle and injected into an Earth orbit with the help of the JPL Deep Space Network, a good example of cooperation. This mission has 3 produced a lot of very interesting and basic results in terms of identifying the waterized zones, the carbon dioxide on the Mars south pole and also the presence of methane together with very precise imagery of the surface of the planet. We have also Smart-1, a lunar probe that has been launched in 2003, which is testing a series of interesting technological developments like unique propulsion and very miniaturized experiments for—Smart-1 will be close to the Moon in the coming months. And we’ll be able to make a detailed inventory of chemical elements of the lunar surface. We have Rosetta, which is an interesting mission carrying a series of instruments [?] being developed by—provided by NASA and developed by American laboratories. It has been launched in March 2004. It will reach the comet—I’ve never been able to say the name— but it is Churyumov-Gerasimenko.