Another bad science decision from the Bush administration

A photo of the AMS Detector

Source: Samuel Ting via the Washington Post

Reference: "The Device NASA Is Leaving Behind: Launch Renews Attention on Grounded Project"
By Marc Kaufman, The Washington Post, December 2, 2007

NASA has decided to back out of plans to deploy a $1.5 billion device -- one that many scientists contend would produce far more significant knowledge than the manned space missions approved by the Bush administration. The administration has decided to limit space shuttle flights, and to allocate room on the scheduled flights to other apparatus. The instrument would detect and measure cosmic rays in a new way. It took 500 physicists from around the world 12 years to build. Martin Zell, head of research operations for the European Space Agency, said the device would if deployed "be the most visible, perhaps the most exciting, experiment on the station."

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS)

would look for evidence of how the universe formed. It would search in particular for evidence of the existence and workings of dark matter and antimatter, which theorists have concluded must exist but have never been identified or measured.
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The science is considered innovative and important -- a major Department of Energy scientific review recently concluded that it "may well make some fundamental discoveries." But the fate of the instrument also has significant implications for international cooperation in space.

"The credibility of the United States is at stake here, because NASA made a commitment to bring Columbus and AMS to the space station," said Samuel C.C. Ting, a Nobel laureate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who conceived the project in 1994 and drew in collaborators from 60 institutes in 16 nations to build and fund it. "After all this work, it would be a terrible blow if the instrument cannot be used."

Comment: While some might see the junking of this important scientific instrument and the work it would allow to be a fall out of the huge spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, I see it more as an indication of the lack of concern for science, and understanding of the long run importance of results of fundamental research. JAD