In response to a request from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Research Council (NRC) established the Committee on Principal-Investigator-Led Missions in the Space Sciences in the summer of 2004 to conduct a study of Principal-Investigator (PI)-led missions in the space sciences. (Appendix A includes brief biographies of the committee members and staff.) Whereas previous committees of the NRC’s Space Studies Board (SSB) considered aspects of PI-led mission lines in the course of other studies (the recommendations of these related NRC studies are provided in Appendix B), the charge to this committee requested an analysis of the issues facing PI-led space science missions.
