Nasa

Shuttle Discovery's successful Ulysses mission ended five months of frustration for the U.S. space program, but it marked only the first step on an incredibly long trip -- in space and on the ground.Discovery, the workhorse among NASA's three usable orbiters, returned safely from a near-perfect mission. But its passenger, the European Space Agency's Ulysses explorer, has half a billion miles to go to execute a tricky "slingshot" swing around Jupiter, the solar system's largest planet, before it reaches its real workstation near the sun. Moreover, NASA still hasn't found the cause of fuel-leak problems that have kept shuttles Columbia and Atlantis on the ground for five months.

Martin Marietta Corp. acknowledged yesterday that it is being investigated as part of a federal probe into alleged fraud and kickbacks among contractors and government officials involved with NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston."

A month after undergoing the most sweeping tune-up in its 12-year history, the Hubble Space Telescope has been given a clean bill of health by NASA scientists. Preliminary tests showed that extensive new hardware installed by astronauts last month in a series of five grueling spacewalks appears to be working flawlessly. The centerpiece of last month's mission was a new electrical system and a state-of-the art camera that promises a tenfold improvement in the $2 billion telescope's ability to find distant objects.

WASHINGTON -- As Senate deficit hawks prepare to trim President Clinton's economic program, NASA officials hope to save the space station Freedom from the congressional chopping block by redesigning the blueprints for the orbiting laboratory."

Washington.-- Rather than doing it nicely, the White House took the shabby route in ousting Adm. Richard Truly from the helm of NASA, making it evident that he was forced to resign. Appointed by George Bush, Admiral Truly took over the agency while it was still convalescing from the Challenger calamity and got it functioning again.But he was part of the old megalomanic clique that got NASA into trouble in the first place; he was the first astronaut to head NASA. And though space operations have proceeded relatively smoothly under his regime, the agency remains inbred, provincial and bound for trouble.

HARTFORD, Conn. -- NASA and a mirror manufacturer share the blame for a flaw that prevents the $1.5 billion Hubble Space Telescope from focusing clearly, a NASA panel has concluded after a five-month investigation.To some extent, the failure to detect a flaw polished into the 94.5-inch Hubble mirror in 1980 and 1981 is a product of the same management climate that led to the fatal explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986, said John D. Mangus, one of six members of the Hubble Optical Systems Board of Investigation.

THE National Aeronautics and Space Administration has enjoyed four decades of marvelous successes with only occasional failures. The American public has loyally supported NASA, and mostly still does, for it was NASA that took us to the moon and beyond. But just as there is a point in an investment where the return on the dollar becomes marginal, so has NASA reached a point where the return on planetary exploration is marginal. The difficulty lies not in the recent series of mishaps in the exploration of Mars, or even those rooted in human errors such as mismatched measuring systems.

WASHINGTON -- NASA's dream of building a permanently staffed space station faces another rude awakening this week on Capitol Hill.Blame it on the inevitable linkage of the space agency's recent failures, a stubborn recession and the federal government's growing debt.Those forces overtook a powerful House subcommittee last month when it signed a death warrant for NASA's $30 billion laboratory in space.Now the agency's Capitol Hill advocates -- a determined band of space enthusiasts and members whose districts include NASA operations -- are getting a hearing today before the House Appropriations Committee.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- It's a good thing that NASA astronaut Norman Thagard packed an extra change of clothes when he went into space with the Russian cosmonauts in March.He won't be home as soon as expected.Dr. Thagard, 51, a physician and veteran of five previous flights, made history March 14 when he became the first U.S. astronaut to be launched aboard a Russian rocket and the first to join cosmonauts aboard the space station Mir.He was supposed to be picked up by the NASA shuttle Atlantis in early June in the first docking between a U.S. shuttle and Mir.That docking was postponed yesterday for the second time, said NASA spokeswoman Lisa Malone.

WASHINGTON -- On Columbus Day, federal scientists plan to launch the world's most ambitious attempt to search for signs of intelligent alien life. But in the intervening six weeks, scientists have said, the project could be hobbled by a pending federal budget cut.The $100 million, 10-year NASA plan to search for extraterrestrial intelligence has been a frequent target for budget attack. As project manager Michael Klein said yesterday, "It has a high giggle factor."But NASA is serious about the project to search for radio signals from other worlds, saying that the technology is already proving to be useful to a variety of other fields, that it has great value in exciting schoolchildren's interest in science, and that it stands a chance of answering one of the most profound questions humans have asked.