Right now, there’s a Husky in space.

Orbiting the Earth aboard the International Space Station since March, Michael Barratt, a NASA flight surgeon and 1981 graduate with a bachelor’s degree in zoology, is one of 13 men and women with degrees from the UW who have gone on to become astronauts.

Barrett will return in September, but he was joined briefly by another UW alumnus.

Gregory C. Johnson, a 1977 graduate with a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering, recently returned from a mission that began in May to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope. While Johnson and Barratt didn’t get a chance to meet face-to-face — the space shuttle did not dock at the space station — their joint presence in orbit reflects the UW’s tradition of producing astronauts.

With the 40th anniversary of the first moon landings this week, UW astronauts and scientists agree it’s a good time to reflect on what the legacy of that achievement means, and where the United States and NASA — and, by extension, mankind — should go next.

“The human race needs some kind of lofty, motivational goal to go … where no human has gone before,” said Adam Bruckner, chair of the UW Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. “Adventure is hard-wired into our genes.”

But what NASA needs now is a clearly defined set of goals for its next step, beyond low Earth orbit, where the space station dwells and the space shuttle visits. To do that, it will need sustained, committed funding, Bruckner said.

At the height of the Apollo program ­— the program initiated with the goal of conducting manned moon landings — in the late 1960s, NASA received more than 4 percent of the national budget.

Today, it gets about 0.5 percent, or $18 billion.

To push onto the moon again by 2020, NASA’s current goal, will require at least $19 billion a year, according to the Government Accountability Office. More realistically, said Bruckner, NASA really needs closer to 1 percent of the budget, or about $31 billion a year. Critics have complained that the money invested in the space program is wasted, Bruckner admitted.

“It’s a mistaken notion that we’re taking money that could be spent on the world’s problems [and giving it to NASA],” he added. “What people don’t realize is that dollar for dollar, NASA programs give the most bang for the buck.”

Some researchers advocate robotic versus the type of manned space exploration exemplified by the shuttle, slated to retire next year, and its replacement, the Orion crew exploration vehicle.

“If the focus is on manned spaceflight, that’s all well and good,” said Bruce Balick, a UW professor of astronomy who helped develop a new Hubble camera installed in the May repair mission.

However, there are always huge risks involved with spaceflight. Citing the experience of the Hubble, which relied heavily on the shuttle for maintenance, Balick said attention, and thus funding for “pure science” research, can get lost in the excitement of manned spaceflight’s engineering feats, including the completion of the $100 billion space station.

“The scientific value for that is infinitesimally small,” Balick said, as compared to unmanned, space-based observatories such as the Hubble. Now’s the time to step back and review why, exactly, we as a nation send people into space, he said.

Such an examination is being done by President Barack Obama’s Human Space Flight Plans Committee. With its report due in August, the committee is reviewing NASA’s goals, as well as what the balance should be between manned and unmanned exploration.

“I personally think it’s a false dichotomy,” said George “Pinky” Nelson, a veteran of three shuttle missions in the 1980s. “Without humans in space, we wouldn’t be doing the science, either. There are certain things that only people can do.”

Nelson, who earned his master’s and doctorate degrees in astronomy from the UW in 1974 and 1978, respectively, is an inductee into the Astronaut Hall of Fame at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

“What we as a society need to do is figure out what we need to do in space,” Nelson said.

As a scientist, he values the research that can be done in low Earth orbit or on the moon, but he also believes that engineering feats enable research.

Johnson agreed.

“NASA should be doing all those things … robotics and manned spaceflight,” Johnson said. “The real discovery goal for me is Mars.”

Johnson says that he wasn’t thinking about NASA or becoming an astronaut during his time at the UW, but his former classmate, Jim Hermanson, remembers always wanting to do something space-related.

Now a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the UW, Hermanson maintains the love for space he had as a child. A boyhood model of a Saturn V rocket and a moon globe are perched on top of his office cabinet.

He recalls waking up at 5 a.m. Pacific Time on July 16, 1969 to catch the launch of Apollo 11 on TV, bugging his mom to let him eat dinner in front of the TV when the Eagle lunar module landed on the moon’s Sea of Tranquility July 20.

“That was a magical moment,” he said, echoing the experience of seeing the first “Earthrise” images from Apollo 8 (the first manned mission to circle the moon) the previous December. “I thought, ‘Wow, people are going to the moon, and I can do that.’”

Even as scientists and engineers debate the merits of going back to the moon, on to Mars and how much to explore with robots vis-à-vis people, that feeling of awe lingers on, he said.

“I think the inspiration is enough to take the trip.”

Reach Opinion Editor Will Mari at features@dailyuw.com.