28 



that it has signed more than 1000 agreements with more than 100 coun- 

 tries for cooperative activities. Many of these are related to sci- 

 entific training, analysis of remote sensing data, analysis of soil 

 samples returned by the Apollo missions to the Moon, and so forth, 

 but there also are many instances of cooperative development of "big 

 science" spacecraft. As noted in appendix 8, many of the EXPLORER 

 missions involved international cooperation, the United States has 

 launched satellites such as HELIOS which were developed entirely by 

 other countries (in that case, by the Federal Republic of Germany), 

 with data exchange as the quid pro quo, equipment has been developed 

 jointly for some missions (for example, the INTERNATIONAL SUN-EARTH 

 EXPLORERS), and so forth. International cooperation in space has 

 grown as the economic situations in most countries have made it 

 difficult for a single country to afford "big science" projects and 

 as some countries, especially those in Europe and Japan, have devel- 

 oped their own expertise in building spacecraft. 



No space big science projects supported by the Department of 

 Defense, which now has a larger space R&D budget than NASA, have 

 been identified. Table 8 shows the funding levels of the space 

 activities of the U.S. Government. The U.S. and foreign space big 

 science projects are listed in table 9 and discussed briefly in 

 appendix 8. 



C. EUROPEAN AND JAPANESE SPACE BIG SCIENCE PROGRAMS 



Most, if not all, of the space big science in the rest of the 

 world has been conducted recently by the European Space Agency (ESA). 

 The big question is cost. It is difficult to be certain that any of 

 the foreign space programs meet the $25 million criterion, although 

 the individual ESA programs probably do. For Japan and specific 

 European countries, space big science programs are included because 

 cumulatively, at least, these programs probably meet the dollar cost 

 criterion. 



D. SOVIET SPACE BIG SCIENCE PROGRAMS 



International cooperation in the Soviet space big science pro- 

 gram began in 1967. In 1967, the U.S.S.R. and its allies formed the 

 INTERKOSMOS organization, comprised of the U.S.S.R., Bulgaria, Cuba, 

 Czechoslovakia, the Democratic Republic of Germany, Hungary, Mongo- 

 lia, Poland, and Romania. Vietnam was added in 1979, although it has 

 not yet participated in any big science programs. The INTERKOSMOS 

 flights, IK-1 through IK-22 have been the most extensive space big 

 science launches. Other programs include the recent VEGA flights 

 with France. 



Even including the INTERKOSMOS and VEGA programs, the U.S.S.R. 

 has had fewer big science satellites with less international coopera- 

 tion than have the United States or ESA. In lunar and planetary 

 probes, the United States has gone farther and to more planets while 

 the Soviets have concentrated on Venus and Mars. The Soviets have 

 had more lunar orbiters and landers, but have not yet landed a man 



