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76 SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL COOPERATION 



protests from not only European space officials but also representatives 

 of foreign ministries. ^^ In this case, "NASA's success in international 

 participation became a political liability"-^; NASA was forced to reduce 

 funding in a major space science mission, and all three existing large mis- 

 sions—the Space Telescope, the Galileo mission to Jupiter, and the 

 Solar Polar mission— had major European involvement. 



There is general agreement that the ISPM affair was handled clum- 

 sily, and both the United States and Europe have moved beyond it, al- 

 though European officials are not beyond using U.S. guilt over the inci- 

 dent as a bargaining chip in U.S. -European negotiations on future 

 collaboration. 



In summary, U.S. -European cooperation in space has become a 

 much more complex enterprise in the last 10 years as both U.S. and Eu- 

 ropean space efforts matured. While the balance sheet in that enterprise 

 remains strongly on the positive side for all participants, competition 

 and conflict have joined collaboration as hallmarks. 



CURRENT ISSUES IN U.S.-EUROPEAN COOPERATION 



The major U.S. science missions now approaching launch, the Space 

 Telescope and the Galileo spacecraft to Jupiter, have major participa- 

 tion by Europeans, and there is every anticipation that there will be con- 

 tinuing cooperation as both the United States and Europe begin new 

 missions. The following are some of the issues which will influence the 

 development of that cooperation. 



Closer Coordination and Collaboration in Planning and 

 Conducting Space Science Efforts 



The task of maximizing the scientific payoff from the resources avail- 

 able in the United States and Europe (and other countries) for space re- 

 search is perhaps the key continuing issue in this area. The United 

 States, ESA, and various European countries are all fully capable of 

 undertaking major space science missions on their own, but with limited 

 funds available on both sides of the Atlantic, there is a need to develop a 

 coordinated approach to space science that recognizes the benefits of 

 cooperation and the realities of competition. To date, it has primarily 

 been government agency-to-govemment agency negotiations that have 

 attempted to do this. There are regularly scheduled meetings between 

 the heads of NASA and ESA and between the space science directors of 

 those two agencies. 



