What is the purpose of NASAs discovery program?
MA: NASA’s discovery program is a response to the fact that missions were getting bigger, more expensive, and therefore much less frequent. So, discovery was invented to get cheaper and more diverse missions, more opportunities to go into space. Discovery is a program within solar system exploration. Astrophysics has similar programs for small Earth orbiting satellites, called Earth orbiters and medium explorers. Those are the astrophysics analogs of the Discovery program. FM: Did the government make cutbacks to NASA, and was this a result of that? MA: The Discovery program wasn’t a result directly of cuts, but it was a result of looking at where the budget was going to go – effectively stay flat. And try to reconcile that with the fact that missions were getting more expensive and therefore fewer and fewer scientists could play a role in space missions. FM: I understand that you’re the Principal Investigator of NASA’s Deep Impact mission that is set to launch January 1st 2004 and impa
