Feb 26 1981
From The Space Library
ESA announced that it had "rejected" NASA's decision to cancel the U.S. spacecraft that would have been part of the joint International Solar-Polar Mission (ISPM). NASA told a meeting; of the two organizations in New York that the cancellation resulted from budget cuts imposed by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in preparing the Reagan administration's budget proposal. ESA responded that canceling the satellite without consultation was a unilateral breach of a memorandum of understanding between the agencies and was unacceptable. ESA asked that NASA restore the program to its original level, noting that unilateral actions of this kind would be detrimental to future space cooperation between the United States and Europe. ESA said that, when its science-program committee decided to pursue ISPM in 1979, they chose that mission over a number of purely European missions because of the value ESA put on transatlantic cooperation.
Because of NASA's decision, European scientists from 17 institutions who supplied experiments for the NASA spacecraft would not be able to fly them. The experiments, "in an advanced stage of development" with more than half of the costs committed, ESA said, would be lost with no corresponding scientific return. ESA's director general immediately asked all of its member states to protest, through their ambassadors in Washington, the decision taken by NASA. Timing was crucial, because Congress would consider the federal budget in March. (ESA Inf 2)
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