Statement by Wesley T. Huntress, Jr - House Science Committee Hearing on NASA FY 2007 Science Budget

"While the 2003 Solar System Decadal Report recommends that R&A be increased over this decade at a rate above inflation, the FY07 budget would reduce funding for R&A by 15% across the board. For reasons hard to fathom, one particular program, astrobiology, is targeted for a 50-percent reduction. Astrobiology was specifically named by the Decadal report as an important new component in the R&A program and is recognized even outside NASA as the agency's newest and most innovative research program bringing biologists, geologists and space scientists together to understand the earliest life on Earth and how we might search for life elsewhere beyond our own planet."