BUDGET CUTS CREATING FRANTIC YEAR AT JPL.

Byline: Lee Condon Daily News Staff Writer

Embarking on a hectic year of space exploration that will include a landing on Mars and a launch to Saturn, the Pasadena-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory also is undergoing a painful downsizing forced by NASA budget cuts.

The venerable laboratory's Galileo spacecraft, in orbit around Jupiter for more than a year, already has yielded a cornucopia of photos and discoveries.

But the lab expects to top that on the Fourth of July by landing a motorized rover with video camera on the surface of Mars - the first American landing on the Red Planet in more than 20 years.

Then in October will come the last of the great planetary probes funded in the days when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was flush with cash. The $1.3 billion Cassini spacecraft will be launched on a history-making voyage of exploration to Saturn and its rings.

But those events will be happening amid the anxiety of downsizing the JPL staff and outsourcing some work. About 300 jobs at the JPL are being shaved this year. An additional 700 are scheduled to go next year.

``There's a kind of duality, almost schizophrenia, at JPL this year,'' said John Logsdon, director of the Washington D.C.-based Space Policy Institute.

John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists said 1997 may be an exciting year for the laboratory as a whole, but for some employees it could end abruptly with a pink slip.

``A lot of budget cuts talked about in previous years are kicking in now,'' Pike said. ``The stuff they are flying out there was put together by people who might not be around much longer.''

JPL officials say they are trying to make the cuts with the fewest possible layoffs.

Instead, they hope to rely almost entirely on attrition and on hiring of displaced JPL employees by outsourcing contractors.

``We're really not projecting layoffs as being one of the primary mechanisms of reducing the work force,'' said chief JPL spokesman Frank O'Donnell.

Since 1993, JPL has whittled its work force down from 7,900 to 6,300, mostly through attrition. Management and employees acknowledge the cutbacks have caused morale problems at JPL, which is a NASA center managed by the California Institute of Technology.

``There are some people whose jobs are evaporating,'' said one JPL employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. But while employees are generally unhappy at the continual cutbacks, ``it's not a crisis,'' he said.

Ironically, the laboratory, which has been at the forefront of planetary exploration for three decades, is having its busiest year since 1989. That was when its Voyager probe flew by Neptune, Galileo was launched and the Magellan probe began its historic mission of mapping the surface of Venus.

This year, Mars Pathfinder is scheduled to arrive at the Red Planet on Independence Day and drop a parachuting probe that will bounce on Martian dirt and deploy a tiny motorized kart with a video camera.

Just two months later, Mars Global Surveyor will enter its orbit in the Mars atmosphere to photograph the Martian landscape.

In October, JPL will celebrate the long awaited launch of Cassini, which will begin its four-year journey to Saturn.

The Cassini mission is a close-up study of Saturn and Titan, the ringed planet's largest moon which is suspected of having Earthlike qualities. In perhaps the most spectacular of the more than 20 experiments on board, Cassini will drop a probe into Titan's atmosphere with a parachute, just as Galileo did at Jupiter.

Also this year, the lab will wrap up its fruitful Galileo mission and continue its Mission to Planet Earth, using instruments aboard a Japanese satellite to study the Earth's oceans.

The laboratory also will shift into high gear on its Origins project, aimed at developing new technologies for future missions.

Among the projects in the planning stages are: a trip to Mars to retrieve soil samples and bring them back to Earth, a rendezvous with Pluto, an infrared telescope to examine star and planetary formation, a mission to Jupiter's mysterious moon Europa, a trip to retrieve samples from comets, and missions to look for planetary systems resembling the solar system.

``(The employees) see it as somewhat ironic. We have so much business coming in but we have to downsize,'' O'Donnell said.

Most of the cuts are in operations and infrastructure, and little effect is expected on the engineers who plan and build the spacecraft, he said.

In addition to the restructuring, JPL is also contending with a new culture.

In the past, ``NASA would say `We want this achievement, JPL; go do it.' Cost sort of came along in the wake of performance,'' said George Alexander, a JPL spokesman. ``Starting about three years ago, we reversed that philosophy.''

While Cassini is a cutting-edge spacecraft, its mission was planned in a bygone era at JPL, when long, expensive projects like Voyager and Galileo were the norm.

``Cassini is the `Last of the Mohicans,' '' Alexander said. ``You're not going to see these big flagship missions anymore.''

In the eight years since Cassini was conceived, JPL has switched its focus to smaller, cheaper spacecraft like the Mars Pathfinder and Mars Global Observer.

While JPL started planning the $1.3 billion Cassini in 1989, the Mars spacecraft were conceived in 1993 and are already en route. Pathfinder has a price tag of $196 million, while the Global Surveyor cost $156 million.

The two Mars missions are the first in a series to be launched over the next 10 years.

``They are kind of our bellwethers,'' said Donna Shirley, manager of the Mars Exploration Program. ``They are our first better, faster, cheaper projects out the door. We're the pioneers.''

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: Jet Propulsion Laboratory workers labor on the Cassini Saturn probe, scheduled to be launched in October.

Gene Blevins/Special to the Daily News