Refocusing NASA planetary science funding

Galactic planetary science

Planetary science beyond the boundaries of our Solar System is today in its infancy. Until a couple of decades ago, the detailed investigation of the planetary properties was restricted to objects orbiting inside the Kuiper Belt. Today, we cannot ignore that the number of known planets has increased by two orders of magnitude nor that these planets resemble anything but the objects present in o...

Lunar and Planetary Science

Britain pledges science funding boost

The British chancellor, Gordon Brown, last month set out spending plans that, if carried out, would lead to the largest sustained increase in science spending for a generation, but many researchers are concerned that such is the pressure on funds, there would be very little money left over for new research. Brown’s ten-year investment framework for science pledged that research and development ...

Surface Systems R & D in NASA ’ s Planetary Exploration Program

In the last several years, since the successful 1997 deployment and operation of the Sojourner rover on the surface of Mars, NASA has entered a new era of space exploration, where the emphasis is on in-situ exploration of planetary surfaces by means of a new class of robotic systems. For example, advanced sample return rovers with demonstrated technology far beyond Sojourner are in preparation ...

Science funding and science policy: Big data as a tool for supporting the research funding process

ÜberResearch pursues a comprehensive approach to big and small data to aid science funders in operations and analysis. We seek to consolidate global award data and funders’ internal data, with a focus on data harmonization, natural language processing and disambiguation. In this article, firstly, I give a definition and some examples of big data. Next, I look at the relevance of big data in sci...