Nasa

Ending its mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope with a perfect landing Monday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the shuttle Endeavour's flawless performance has NASA flying high for the moment. But it will still take many weeks for scientists to determine whether the refurbished space telescope now will be capable of living up to expectations.On Sunday NASA reported that the Space Telescope appeared to be in good shape. Hubble was launched in 1990 with an improperly ground mirror that prevented it from focusing on the more remote objects in the universe.

THERE'S a kind of self-deception familiar to gamblers everywhere.You make a rule for yourself ("I'm going to leave the roulette table when I'm down $200") and when the crucial moment comes, you find a reason to break it ("I just remembered that red is my lucky color").The late physicist Richard Feynman caught the space agency at precisely this game in 1986, when he served on the presidential commission investigating the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.He found that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was setting safety standards and then bending them at the last minute as needed.

Major changes could be in store for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, based on the recommendations of a 12-member committee set up this summer to study the continuing tales of balky equipment, poor handling of the space shuttle fleet and devastating problems aboard the $1.5 billion Hubble Space Telescope.What has emerged is a blueprint considered by many in NASA's scientific, political and contractor constituencies to be full of common sense.The strongest point is a call to reduce dependence on the shuttles by building a new unmanned launcher.

I find the outlook for NASA over the next decade by Waleed Abdalati and Robert Braun to be very narrow minded, self-serving and steeped in false hope ("After space shuttle program, NASA's future still bright," July 4). I can see how as NASA's chief technologist and chief scientist, they would welcome an increase in funding in their respective areas, but they must face reality. In this unsettled budgetary environment, unfocused investments in science and technology are ripe for cuts and outright deletion.

The U.S. Senate gave the National Aeronautics and Space Administration a much-needed vote of confidence last week when it turned back an attempt to kill the multibillon-dollar space station.This vote represented a victory for NASA Administrator Dan Goldin, who has been struggling to reshape the agency's mission and goals as well as retool the way it does business in an era of budget austerity. The agency has shifted its emphasis from costly, complex missions, like the failed $1 billion Mars Observer spacecraft, to smaller projects that produce new knowledge at relatively modest cost.

GOLDEN, Colo. - Linda Ham seldom worried about the future during a 21-year career that saw her become one of NASA's most powerful space shuttle managers. Since a year ago today, however, when the Columbia accident claimed the lives of seven astronauts, the future is never far from her mind. For the past two months, the former shuttle executive has been working in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains outside Denver - about 900 miles from her husband and sons in Houston - to help organize a government energy initiative.

WASHINGTON - Following a scathing report on the lapses that led to the loss of the space shuttle Columbia, Republican and Democratic senators yesterday pressed the NASA administrator to find those responsible for the disaster and hold them accountable. But Sean O'Keefe, chief of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, refused to assign blame during his congressional testimony or in a subsequent news meeting. He disparaged demands for what he called "a public display or a public execution or a firing squad that lines up at noon," even as he asserted that a new management team soon would lead remaining shuttles back to flight.

Only sheer chance averted another shuttle catastrophe, NASA acknowledged yesterday amid disclosures that at least two shuttles flew repeatedly with components so defective they could have ignited another explosion."

Despite massive downsizing, budget cuts and an uncertain future, NASA is proving it still has the "right stuff." Yesterday, astronaut-physician Norman Thagard returned to Earth after 115 days in space to the dual triumph of having become NASA's longest-flying space traveler and a key crew member of a mission that saw the first U.S.-Russian space linkup in 20 years.Dr. Thagard and Vladimir Dezhurov and Gennady Strekalov were launched into orbit in March atop a Soyuz rocket bound for a rendezvous with the Mir space station.

WASHINGTON -- The Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt would be stripped of major satellite-tracking programs and several research projects under a proposal outlined in an internal NASA memo.A spokeswoman at the Washington headquarters of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration played down the seriousness of the document. She said the document was a "thinking piece rather than an edict set in stone."First of all, it is premature to say what the effect of this radical restructuring will be," said the spokeswoman, Laurie Boeder.