Reports issued by the Board in 1974 and 1975 recommended a start of the Space Telescope project by NASA. The 1975 report said specifically, "It is clear that the time is now ripe for a start on this important project; nothing is to be gained by delay." In 1976 the Board assembled a group of 20 astronomers from North America and Europe to discuss astronomical observatories in space. The brief report of this group contained a chapter on science with the Large Space Telescope, a chapter which described the contribution it could make to understanding of cosmology, to the distance scale of the universe and to the evolution and morphology of galaxies. Last year, in view of the promising prospect of Congressional approval for the Space Telescope, NASA asked the Board to recommend appropriate institutional arrangements for optimal use of the telescope, once it is in orbit. A special study group, led by Donald Hornig, recommended that NASA form an Institute to be operated by a consortium of universities in order "to provide the long term guidance and support for the scientific effort, to provide a mechanism for engaging astronomers throughout the world, and to provide a means for dissemination and use of data derived from the Space Telescope. Why is there so much interest in this particular telescope? Many astronomers believe, and there are observations to suggest, that the universe started some 10-20 billion years ago with a cosmic explosion, often referred to as the Big Bang, in which all the matter of the universe was created and then started to expand. This expansion continues today, albeit seemingly at a decreasing rate. The questions that fascinate present day cosmologists include: How fast is the expansion decelerating? Is this decrease uniform in space and time? What will be the fate of the universe expansion forever or an eventual - collapse into a "primordial fireball", followed by rebirth and eternal recycling? Although the Space Telescope may not provide definitive answers to these great questions, it can and will gather more understanding of them than we have ever known before. It can look ten times as far into space as the most powerful ground based telescopes and it has ten times the resolution, that is, it can discriminate between objects one-tenth as far apart. Thus, we may be able, for the first time, to see and study individual stars in distant galaxies. immense scientific return, the task of fabrication of this telescope, placing it in orbit and rendering it operational is a fit challenge to the developing capability of man to engage in those applications of space technology that will be possible only when the Space Shuttle has become a functional reality. In addition to this A second example of long-term planning for space science deals with a NASA project that has been in the public eye for the past year, the landing of the Viking spacecraft on the surface of Mars. Planning for Viking began a decade earlier and our Board was continuously involved. The purpose of these landers was to make physical, chemical and biological measurements of the Martian surface and atmosphere; perhaps greatest attention attached to three experiments intended to ascertain whether "life" exists on Mars. A recently released Space Science Board report evaluated the data from these experiments, and recommended a future course for biological investigations of Mars. The report says, "Viking has neither confirmed nor ruled out current or past Martian life. Organic compounds have not been detected. Although all three biology experi ments have yielded signals that indicate chemical activity, the interpretation of the signals remains ambiguous or Abiogenic explanations seem likely for at inconclusive. least two of the experiments and probably for the third. We believe that it is preferable to predicate future strategy on the assumption that the signals are not biological in origin." In other words, life may or may not exist on Mars but if so, Viking did not find it. The report goes on to say that if life does exist, it will be difficult to find; the report suggests looking in more favorable places, i.e., underneath the surface and at the edges of the polar ice caps. Importantly, the report recommends that "the long term objectives of exobiology and surface chemistry are best served by the return of an unsterilized sample to earth." What is the significance of all of this to us here on earth? Again I quote from the Board's report, "It is customary to think that life exists only on planets that provide the proper conditions for its maintenance. But the realization is growing that life itself may modify a planet's surface and atmosphere to optimize conditions for its existence, Even if it were demonstrated that life does not now exist on Mars, the question would remain whether Earth and Mars differed sufficiently in their early histories to permit the origin of life on the former but not the latter. Or alternatively, did both planets permit the origin of life and then diverge dramatically? If so, did the type and extent of life that evolved play a major role in that divergence? "These questions are of fundamental scientific interest, and they may also be questions of fundamental importance to all of us on Earth. We have clearly reached the point where human activities are exerting global effects on the composition of the Earth's surface, atmosphere and perhaps its temperature. Atmospheric pollutants may affect the ozone layer and could modify the Earth's albedo." The burning of fossil fuels has already measurably increased the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere, and some scenarios contemplated by our Geophysics Research Board predict serious, even devastating consequences if major fractions of our energy requirements continue to be derived from these sources, a process that would be markedly accelerated by large-scale transition from hydrocarbons to coal as our principal energy source. "Clearly the stability of equilibria and steadystate processes on the Earth's surface and in its atmosphere to human perturbants, and the role of the Earth's biota in this stability are matters or more than arcane interest. Since the surface of Mars provides a natural global system for comparison with Earth, it seems likely that studies of biology, if any, and of chemical evolution on our neighboring planet will shed important light on these terrestrial ques tions - questions that could be significant to our ultimate survival." Let me turn to a third example of scientific inquiry in which the significance of long-term planning becomes obvious climate. We are embarked on a comprehensive effort to understand both the short-range phenomena of weather and the long-term processes more properly called climate. Observations of earth from space have already demonstrated their power as a new and powerful tool for observing, measuring and cataloging conditions that influence climate on this planet. But what measurements should be made? How often? To what precisions, and for how long? These questions will be addressed in the proposed NASA Climate Program, a program that was formulated with assistance from the National Research Council. In 1976, at the request of NASA, a Coordinating Committee for the NASA Climate Program was appointed; this committee drew upon all of the resources of the NRC, viz., more than a dozen separate committees that have been studying climate dynamics for the past decade. One of the principal contributions of this committee was a new way of looking at climate, not as one large hopelessly complex problem, as it had sometimes been viewed before, but by dividing it up into four distinct categories of problem |