Building a Better NASA Workforce: Meeting the Workforce Needs for the National Vision for Space Exploration by National Research Council of the National Academies

Author:National Research Council of the National Academies
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Space and Aeronautics : Policy, Reviews and Evaluations
Publisher: NATIONAL ACADEMY PRESS
Published: 2007-06-29T00:00:00+00:00

The work of NASA scientists is unique in accomplishing the agency’s mission of expanding human knowledge through space-based exploration. They provide a critical interface between the science community and the NASA engineers and managers who implement NASA missions, maintaining stewardship of the community’s science priorities and ensuring that those priorities are held front and center in the execution of NASA scientific flight missions. NASA scientists also serve the broader science community through participation in the celestial navigation experience base maintained at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is vital for supporting other NASA projects; the lunar sample curatorial facility in Houston; the National Space Science Data Center at Goddard Space Flight Center; and the microgravity drop tower facility at Glenn Research Center. In-house scientists also play key roles in focused R&D programs and shepherd technology development partnerships with academia and industry that enable future missions.

The roles NASA scientists play span all three phases of the exploration cycle: (1) the pre-formulation phase, during which they interface with the science community to ensure that high-priority future science goals are the focus of basic research, technology development, and mission concept development efforts; (2) the project development phase, when they serve as project and instrument scientists, among other roles, ensuring that mission science requirements are implemented to the fullest extent possible and engaging the science community in the process of implementing NASA missions; and (3) the mission operations/data analysis phase, when they continue to serve as project scientists and also are often responsible for administering the observing and guest investigator proposal review process and ensuring that data are calibrated, distributed to the science community, and archived for external use.

Just as NASA engineers and managers must be able to acquire and continue to improve their core capabilities and maintain their technical capabilities through hands-on experience, so also must scientists maintain a presence in the science community as practicing scientists to continue to perform their duties. This work as practicing scientists, i.e., basic research, is typically done during the first and third phases of the exploration cycle outlined above—the pre-formulation phase often entails basic R&D, and data analysis is fundamentally a scientific research activity. The key is that this work is best performed within the context of a NASA scientist’s job to interface with the broader community and provide stewardship of community priorities within the agency. Neglecting the basic research role of NASA scientists would lead to an unhealthy NASA scientific workforce, ultimately weakening the agency’s ability to execute national science priorities.

As a result of the transition to full-cost accounting (now called full-cost management), much of the “practicing science” work at NASA centers is now funded through the research and analysis programs, which have limited budgets. NASA scientists are thus in direct competition with the broader science community (in addition to working with it, as their roles intend). The committee was not presented with data regarding the extent to which the level of funding that was transferred to the research and analysis accounts during the transition to full-cost accounting was adequate to cover the work of in-house scientists.

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