There Are Two NASAs. (April 3, 2010)

An item in this week's What's New from Bob Park gives hope that the Obama administration is moving to get NASA to be able to straighten up and fly right.

 NASA: CLIMATE RESEARCH IS NOW A MAJOR FOCUS.

There has always been two NASAs: Adventure-NASA that caters to a public
weaned on Star Trek, and Science-NASA that gathers real information about
our universe. Support for the two NASAs has been in almost inverse
proportion to their value. That is changing. On Wednesday, NASA laid out
plans to boost spending on climate research over the next five years to
make up for cuts by the Bush administration. NASA’s Earth Science budget
will increase 62 percent. Although NASA has 13 climate research
satellites in orbit, most are far beyond their design lifetimes. Ten
replacement satellites are scheduled for launch. DSCOVR, the Deep Space
Climate Observatory, put in storage during the Bush years, is also
scheduled for launch.