Chairman WALKER. Very good, Mr. Hathaway. That's very help ful. Dr. Kennel, we'll hear from you next. STATEMENT OF DR. CHARLES KENNEL, ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR, OFFICE OF MISSION TO PLANET EARTH, NASA, WASHINGTON, DC. Dr. KENNEL. Thank you very much. I really do appreciate the opportunity to discuss NASA's Mission to Planet Earth. In case I don't get through all of them, I'm going to focus on three key points. First, that Mission to Planet Earth was, is now, and will be a science-driven and peer-reviewed program. Secondly, that we have fundamentally changed program implementation and the way we think about it. We're going to plan for scientific evolution. We're going to plan and stimulate technology infusion. And we're going to seek further international commercial and inter-agency partnerships, all with the goal of improving performance and reducing costs. The final point which I'll only make once, Mission to Planet Earth is one of NASA's five strategic enterprises. Its development has been a priority in the last three administrations. I'll move on to my first point. Since 1982, there have been nine external studies, of which Professor Frieman's was the last, and of course numerous internal reviews over the last 14 years. And from this evolving set of studies, clearly tightly link to the scientific community, there has emerged a clear set of goals and requirements for the Mission to Planet Earth program that specify our objectives and our measurement needs on the 15-year time scale, as is well known, but also to develop results on the one- and five-year time scales. We seem to have arrived at a stable view of the degree of comprehensiveness, the science scope that is needed to address the interdisciplinary problems of Earth systems science and provide a scientific roadmap for global environmental thinking. We have arrived at well-defined standards for coverage, calibration, continuity and timeliness of that data. And I'd just like to point out that Mission to Planet Earth's program extends far beyond the highly public issue of global warming. We will concentrate on seasonal to inter-annual climate prediction, changes in land use and land cover, atmospheric, especially tropospheric, chemistry, natural hazards. And if we do these jobs right and add a few more measurements, we will make our contribution to improving our ability to make long-term climate predictions. In the area of scientific and technological evolution, we've moved away from the old approach. No more will there be identical copies of the spacecraft flown to get the same measurements. We refuse to fly old technologies and address old scientific issues in the year 2017. To accomplish this, we will institute comprehensive implementation reviews every two years to drive continuous innovation into the program, and we'll invite our scientific and our commercial and 136 our international partners to help us to decide what to do next in the next stage of the implementation of the program. Already, as you have mentioned, we have studied driven technological evolution and we believe at this stage, our understanding is clear that we can accomplish our fundamental scientific goals and decrease the costs of the program beyond the year 2000 by 30 percent, perhaps more. We understood that the budget profile extending into the next century was unsustainable. Already, if you look at the results of what has happened thus far, we can compare specific improvements, the way the program looked between 1990 and '94, and the way we currently think it will be implemented in the years 2000 and 2004. We've moved from very large to medium and small spacecraft. The number has increased by at least a factor of three, while achieving this 30 percent savings. The average development time is faster by a greater factor of two. The average spacecraft launched per year has increased by about a factor of five. The average spacecraft development reduced by about a factor of three. In addition, we have scrubbed the number of EOS data products, reduced by a factor of four, and the average EOS data rate has been reduced by a factor of two. Now, we will propose this afternoon and tomorrow to Professor Frieman's committee our response to their creative approach to the generation and the distribution of the data to a larger and more diverse community. We understand and we've had to take some of the savings that we achieved in the front end of the program and reinvest it in order to achieve this more sustainable cost profile over the long term. We did listen to outside advice. The Board on Sustainable Development has endorsed and has amplified and will continue to amplify this new approach. On directed technology infusion, we have joined the New Millennium program, a cooperative NASA-private industry-university activity to develop and demonstrate next-generation technology both for spacecraft and for instruments. In our field, the name of the game is to re-engineer and reduce the size and cost of those instruments so as to bring the cost down in the future. We need to invest now to make the savings later. In addition, we are going to challenge the scientific community with a new small-sat line, Earth systems science probes, low-cost small satellite program, $120 million end to end, through data reduction, comprehensive observational strategy, including ground measurements, if they need them, 24- to 36-month development time. We cannot say to the scientific community that somebody in 1990 decided what the priorities would be in 2017. We must continue to develop our understanding. On the commercial international and inter-agency partnerships, we do commercial data buys at the present time. We provide Landsat 4 and 5 images to our scientific community. We are awaiting the data from a purchase of the SeaWiFs. W to Next year, we will launch the Lewis & Clark spacecraft and we will purchase data when our scientific requirements-when they can satisfy our requirements. And the strategy of a comprehensive review every second year, inviting in the commercials, will encourage them to try to meet our needs and at the same time, will enable us to make timely decisions to adopt their products when they become available. We are just about to submit for general review and circulation a new commercial strategy to promote the application of Mission to Planet Earth data, to develop partnerships in data analysis and technology development, and to make clear what our scientific interests are, so that our commercial partners can respond to those interests. And in general, to try to create a clear and consistent Mission to Planet Earth image and role in the commercial community. We have been working recently exceptionally closely with NOAA to try to help develop the new weather system, the converged weather system. We have incorporated NOAA interests into the New Millennium technology development program. There are at least six areas of common interests identified in NPOESS and we are working to reduce the cost and increase the capability of weather instruments, both in the polar and the geostationary orbit area. We are working closely with MEDEA, as Professor Frieman identified. In the international arena, 19 countries at the present time are investing $3-1/2 billion in the program of Mission to Planet Earth, and they conduct $4 billion worth of complementary missions in the same area. Much of the data, we get access to that, so that the international contribution now to this field now slightly exceeds that of Mission to Planet Earth, and we expect that to continue to grow. Once again, we expect, with the two-year comprehensive reviews, that each time a new cooperative opportunity emerges on the international scene, we will be able to capture it and integrate it into our program planning. So, in closing, I would just like to comment that it's certainly the case that the pace of change in the space enterprise has accelerated since the Cold War has ended. NASA has responded to those changes. Mission to Planet Earth intends to capture those changes. We think it's time to get on with this program. We have a job to do. We shouldn't delay the start of the new comprehensive observational strategy. We fear the loss of the science and the timely applications and the information, and it is clear to us that further budget reductions, particularly in the short-term, will translate into knowledge reductions. And, of course, as you understand, we are committed to continuously exploring opportunities to reduce the costs and to expand the scientific capability, and our posture is to do that as a matter of daily business. In closing, the EOS program begins in 1998, and it will mark a new era in land remote sensing. With the AM-1 spacecraft, with Landsat, with Lewis & Clark, and the numerous commercial opportunities, we expect to see a major change, a flood of information that will provide new clarity and new understanding about the processes of change that occur on the surface of the Earth. We greatly look forward to the new era in Earth observations, and we urge you, let this revolution continue. Thank you. [The prepared statement and attachments of Dr. Kennel follow:] Statement of Dr. Charles Kennel Associate Administrator for Mission to Planet Earth before the Committee on Science United States House of Representatives March 6, 1996 Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee: I am pleased to be here today to discuss NASA's Mission to Planet Earth, which generates solid science results that help us better understand global changes on Earth and provide practical benefits to Americans. In doing so, it is important to focus on seven key points: 1. We must improve our understanding of the global environment. 2. Mission to Planet Earth is, first and foremost, a sound scientific endeavor. 3. NASA has dramatically changed Mission to Planet Earth while preserving a science driven approach. 4. International partnerships are an indispensable part of Mission to Planet Earth. 5. Commercial and interagency partnerships provide an all-embracing 6. Technological innovation energizes the long term program. We Must Improve Our Understanding of the Global Environment When the astronauts first looked back on the Earth during their trip to the Moon, they observed a planet in a constant state of change. We understand some of these changes pretty well - short term weather forecasts, hurricane tracking, and the way things grow. But we are missing a lot of other critical information, like |