WASHINGTON -- The head of the Senate committee that oversees NASAs budget is urging the agencys new administrator to be cautious as he sets out to strengthen NASAs cooperation with the Pentagon.
In nearly every public appearance he has made since reporting for duty Jan. 2, NASA Administrator Sean OKeefe has called for closer cooperation on technology development between the U.S. space agency and the Department of Defense.
In an appearance with OKeefe Jan. 22 at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) said the United States should think carefully about breaching the long established firewalls that were designed to maintain a separation between military and civilian space programs. "When it comes to working with Defense, when it comes to working with intel, I think we need to be very careful and very prudent," Mikulski said.
Mikulski, chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Veterans Affairs, Housing and Urban Development and independent agencies subcommittee, also stressed that she is not opposed to NASA and the Pentagon cooperating on unclassified research and development efforts that have both military and civilian applications.
Mikulksi said she would prefer that NASAs involvement with the U.S. military and intelligence communities be limited to unclassified efforts. She expressed reservations, for example, about assigning NASA an operational role in the U.S. campaign against international terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda.
"Right now we probably have terrific pictures of Afghanistan that could help with refugee efforts," Mikulski said. "But Im not so sure NASA should be used to find the caves where [Osama] bin Laden is. We have separate satellites to do that."
OKeefe said he shared Mikulskis concerns and does not want to see NASA delve deeply into the world of classified research. "I think Sen. Mikulski identified the right criteria," OKeefe said. NASAs role should be limited to providing open source information technology for which there is a wide range of utility, he said.
"In that regard we can maximize the knowledge base among all these different fields in a way that can have the greatest application and utility. It is the end use that we must be careful of," OKeefe told reporters and several dozen Goddard employees assembled for a Jan. 22 press conference here.
OKeefe said there is no longer the clear delineation between military and civilian technology that existed when NASA was chartered in 1958. He said the pace of development of information technology over the last 10 years has rendered the distinction between military and civilian uses "virtually indecipherable."
OKeefe said NASAs expertise in aeronautics, space flight, and miniaturization should be available to the military. But he said he would just as soon not have NASA working on classified projects.
"Frankly Im just as happy to leave much of that in my previous incarnation," he said.
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