Nasa Officials

Weather postponed Tuesday's launch of the ORS-1 satellite attached to the Minotaur 1 rocket, according to NASA officials, leaving spectators in the Mid-Atlantic to wait for another day. The ORS-1 launch was scheduled between 8:28 p.m. and 11:28 p.m., from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport Virginia's Wallops Island which will be visible between South Carolina up to New York and as far west as West Virginia. Officials said that if the launch was scrubbed, subsequent attempts will follow nightly through July 10, except for a three-day window around the planned launch of the space shuttle Atlantis from Cape Canaveral, Fla., set for July 8. The Air Force will launch the battlefield imaging satellite into orbit the first operational version of the Air Force's Operationally Responsive Space satellite series.

NEW ORLEANS - NASA investigators at the agency's plant here are looking into the possibility that air bubbles beneath silicone-based insulation on the Columbia's external fuel tank could have caused a chunk of insulating foam to fly off the space shuttle during liftoff, a worker at the factory said. Investigators have been reviewing paperwork related to the Columbia's external fuel tank and documentation of the building of eight other tanks completed here at the Michoud Assembly Facility, the worker said.

NASA officials vowed yesterday to investigate reports that astronauts were drunk before missions on at least two occasions, but several former astronauts questioned the claims, saying that they were too closely monitored to risk breaking the rules on drinking before a flight. "I didn't see any use of alcohol that infringed safety," said Tom Jones, who served on four shuttle missions before retiring in 2001. "I didn't see any flight surgeons who would have hesitated to blow the whistle."

HOUSTON - NASA put future space shuttle flights on indefinite hold yesterday after agency managers acknowledged that a piece of insulating foam nearly as large as the piece that doomed Columbia in 2003 fell off Discovery's external fuel tank during launch. The announcement of what NASA called a "debris event" threw the shuttle program into disarray a day after tens of thousands, including first lady Laura Bush, cheered Discovery and its seven-member crew as they began a mission to the International Space Station.

These are tough times for the nation's space program. As Congress moves to balance the budget, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration stands to take a big hit and Maryland is going to feel the pain.It's too soon to make any predictions on how much Congress will slash from NASA's budget in the next few weeks, but no one doubts that the cuts will far exceed what the Clinton administration and NASA officials had anticipated.It is also clear that NASA will be forced to eliminate far more jobs than those announced a week ago to meet the administration's plan to reduce the agency's budget by $5 billion over the next five years.

Grieving NASA scientists began painstaking detective work yesterday to pinpoint the cause of the catastrophe that tore apart the space shuttle Columbia as the aging spacecraft plummeted into the atmosphere at more than 12,000 mph. They have a critical clue in the first sign of trouble during re-entry: the successive failure of temperature sensors embedded in the left wing, the left tire well and the hydraulic system that controls the left wing flaps....

Before its heartbreaking re-entry, the shuttle Columbia's two weeks and two days in orbit around Earth were as ordinary as space travel ever is, marked by a nearly seamless launch, few mechanical troubles and quiet moments of history and everyday life in space. Columbia's crew attracted attention for including the first Israeli astronaut and marking the 17-year anniversary of the Challenger disaster. The seven crew members also left their legacy in science, completing about 80 experiments as part of a rare pure-research mission.

Hurricane Katrina extensively damaged NASA space shuttle facilities, raising the strong possibility of flight delays that could jeopardize the future of the Hubble Space Telescope. Katrina caused an estimated $500 million in damage to the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, NASA officials said yesterday, and $600 million at the Mississippi-based Stennis Space Center, 45 miles east of there. The shuttles' fuel tanks are built at Michoud and shuttle engines are tested at Stennis. NASA has not set a date for a Hubble servicing mission, and the agency's first priority in using the shuttle is servicing the International Space Station.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A dozen NASA engineers from across the country are gathering in Houston today to figure out how and why the nation should send people to Mars.The weeklong meeting at the Johnson Space Center is very preliminary. However, it is an essential first step toward planning a massive, $25 billion mission to send humans to another planet, NASA officials said. The engineers will try to come up with a rationale, a cost estimate and a general plan to get there.The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has made two other weak forays into planning a human mission to Mars, but experts give this latest effort a better chance of survival.

HOUSTON - NASA will study whether it can give astronauts the ability to inspect and repair heat-resistant tiles on the space shuttle while in orbit, officials said yesterday, one of the first moves the agency has made to address safety since the Columbia disintegrated while re-entering Earth's atmosphere. Officials at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration insist they intend to fly the shuttles again, though the space agency will have to assure the public that a replay of the Columbia tragedy Feb. 1 could not occur.