Vision and Voyages for Planetary Science in the - Solar System ...

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National and International Programs in Planetary Science
RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN PLANETARY SCIENCE PROGRAMS AT NASA AND NSF
The principal federal agencies that support the nation’s programs in planetary science are the
Planetary Science Division (PSD) of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate and the Division of
Astronomical Sciences (AST) in NSF’s Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences Division.
The primary purpose of NSF-AST is to support research in ground-based astronomy, to provide
access to world-class research facilities, and to support the development of new instrumentation and nextgeneration
facilities (Chapter 10). Planetary science directly benefits from NSF’s activities in two ways.
First, a program of peer-reviewed research grants and postdoctoral fellowships supports individual
investigators conducting theoretical, observational and laboratory studies. Such grants support all
astronomical disciplines, with no predetermined allocations. Second, NSF provides peer-reviewed access
to telescopes at public facilities such as the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, the National
Radio Astronomy Observatory, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, and the international
Gemini Observatory (Figure 2.1).
The annual budget of NSF-AST is currently approximately $230 million. Planetary astronomers
must compete against all other astronomers for access to both research grants and telescope time,
however, and thus only a small fraction of AST’s facilities and budget support planetary science.
FIGURE 2.1 The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Arecibo is used for radar observation of the
Moon, Mars, Venus, Mercury, nearby asteroids, Saturn’s rings, and the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn.
SOURCE: Courtesy of the NAIC-Arecibo Observatory, a facility of the NSF.
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