NASA Deepens Space Ties With Israel

NASA PRESS RELEASE

During a meeting Tuesday at NASA Headquarters in Washington, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and Israel Space Agency Director General Zvi Kaplan signed a joint statement of intent to expand the agencies’ cooperation in civil space activities.

The signing followed a meeting between Bolden, Kaplan and Professor Daniel Hershkowitz, Israel’s minister of Science and Technology. It advanced discussions that began when Bolden visited Israel in January.

The agencies agreed to identify new joint activities related to Earth and space science, life sciences, space exploration and other areas of mutual interest. The goal is to expand scientific exchanges and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers.

NASA and ISA identified the following potential opportunities for bilateral cooperation:

• space geodesy, the measurement from space of Earth’s gravitational field, tides, and the movement of its poles and crust;
• hydrological observations and joint research;
• an expansion of Israel’s participation in the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) education program;
• planetary science through ISA’s affiliate membership in the NASA Lunar Science Institute;
• launch and range safety;
• remote sensing data cooperation; and
• use of the International Space Station for Israeli research and educational experiments.

Editor’s Note: Aside from launch and range safety cooperate that involves rockets (a dual use technology), nothing on this list is particularly controversial or strategically sensitive. This is probably a good list of the types of cooperative projects we could do with predominantly Muslim countries (or predominantly anything countries, for that matter).

In fact, we’re already doing some of them. Saudi Arabia is an affiliate member of the Lunar Science Institute, and three United Arab Emirates students are interning at NASA Ames this summer.

All of this strengthens my belief that the outrage over Charlie Bolden’s recent remarks on outreach to Muslim countries was absurd. All he said was that the initiative had a high priority within the larger context of NASA’s wider efforts to deepen cooperation with the world on space. Bolden never said it was the space agency’s highest priority from a programmatic standpoint.

NASA has been vigorously pursuing deeper cooperation across the board with established space powers (Europe, Japan, Russia, Canada), emerging ones (China, India and South Korea), and smaller nations like Israel. Outreach to Muslim nations isn’t really much different. Nor is there any sign that it is really hindering NASA’s other efforts.

The criticism of Bolden’s remarks had less to do with an actual cooperative programs than with deep veins of suspicion, mistrust and dislike – barriers that cooperation is aimed at breaking down. The efforts are relatively small but valuable – it would be a shame to see them curtailed due to hysteria based on some misinterpreted remarks.