Upgrading NASA Labs

The National Aeronautics & Space Administration must invest more in maintaining and upgrading its basic research labs if it wants to meet major mission goals such as planet exploration or understanding the origins of the universe, according to a National Research Council report.

"Solid basic research has always been a critical component for advancing NASA's missions," said John T. Best, NRC report committee cochair and technical director of the Plans & Programs Directorate at the Arnold Engineering Development Center in Tennessee. "To ensure future success, it's imperative that NASA restore and maintain its basic research laboratories."

The report, which looked at six NASA centers, found that the facilities and equipment in use was on average "marginally adequate" to conduct high-quality basic research. And with the exception of the new science building at the Goddard Space Flight Center, over 80% of the research labs are more than 40 years old and need significant maintenance and upgrades yearly.

To improve the research conditions, the report recommends that NASA balance long-term research—which has fallen out of favor in recent years—with short-term mission programs. It also recommends that NASA find a way to solve its growing deferred maintenance problems, which have ballooned from a budget of $1.8 billion in 2004 to $2.5 billion in 2009.

As a target, the report recommends that the agency improve the quality of and equipment at its basic research labs to be as good as that of top-tier universities and other government labs, such as the Department of Energy national labs.