NASA Pulls Plug On Costly Satellite.... 082401 THE HOWARD CHRONICLES

AUGUST 24, 04:28 EDT
<b>NASA Pulls Plug on Costly Satellite </b><i>

By ANDREW BRIDGES
AP Science Writer </i>


LOS ANGELES (AP) — NASA is ending a satellite mission that kept tabs on the hole in Earth's ozone layer because the space agency can't afford the $10 million-a-year bill.

The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite will cease scientific operations by Sept. 30, 10 years after it was deployed by space shuttle Discovery.

NASA said the 6 1/2 -ton, 35-foot satellite will either be plucked from orbit by the space shuttle or allowed to crash back to Earth sometime between 2016 and 2027.

The mission was originally designed to last for just three years, though seven of its 10 instruments still work. A replacement mission, AURA, is scheduled to be launched in 2003.

NASA faces budget overruns on a number of projects, including its stake in the international space station.

``Scientists are screaming, 'How can NASA turn off a satellite?' We have planned this for years,'' David Steitz, a NASA spokesman, said. ``Sorry guys, but it's over. We can't afford to continue to feed it, and we have other priorities with new technologies.''

The satellite was designed to provide information about the upper atmosphere by measuring its winds, temperatures, chemistry and energy received from the sun. It is best known for monitoring a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica.

Scientists on the ozone project are angry about the decision. They have proposed temporarily suspending operations, then restoring them in a year or so when the satellite could work in tandem with a European satellite being prepared for launch.

``It's a $1 billion asset we're throwing down the drain because we can't come up with a couple of million to keep it running,'' said Mark Schoeberl, the mission's former project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

There would be no way of controlling where the satellite debris would hit Earth, said Bill Ailor, director of the El Segundo-based Center for Orbital and Re-entry Debris Studies. But he said it would likely land in the ocean, as did chunks of both the Mir space station and Compton Gamma Ray Observatory.

``It's not really cause for alarm,'' Ailor said.

———

On the Net:

UARS: http://umpgal.gsfc.nasa.gov/uars-science.html

Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies: net http://www.aero.org/cords/

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

More on the budget worries...

WASHINGTON -- The NASA-led mega-project that is the International Space Station (ISS) has become an out-of-control effort, one that needs an immediate managerial overhaul to assure its productivity and retain its promise of being a world-class orbiting laboratory.

Those are the marching orders for members of a newly formed ISS Management and Cost Evaluation (ICME) Task Force. Meeting at NASA Headquarters on August 20-21, the members of the austere group, including Nobel Prize winners, as well as military and civilian experts from scientific, high-tech, financial, and managerial circles began grappling with a myriad of thorny and head-spinning issues.
The project is a victim to inadequate cost-accounting measures, a skyrocketing price tag to complete, and an increasingly suspect research agenda given funding shortfalls and shrinking crew size.
All these issues help frame the program as one steeped in controversy rather than as a cosmic gateway to the universe.
Signal of worry
Recent revelations point to a $4.8 billion growth in NASA's part of the program. That raises the cost to complete the ISS to a projected $30.1 billion. The escalating number is one that NASA itself, Congress, and other budget-watchers fear will grow. Furthermore, it is now estimated that the outpost will cost on the order of $1.5 billion a year to operate.

Meanwhile, overhead, some 300,000 pounds of ISS hardware now orbits Earth, built by Russia, America, Europe, Japan and Canada. Spacewalkers have chalked up about 135 hours of "outside time", with over 860 hours of spacewalking duties still ahead in order to finish building the ISS.
The White House has sent a signal of worry about the overall health of the ISS project. The Bush Administration has forced NASA to take a hard look at killing portions of the orbiting outpost, a prospect that would likely curb the scientific output of the facility.
International partners in the project have raised concern that the United States may not meet treaty-like obligations to finish the job at hand.
Reality check
The newly appointed ICME Task Force group is an independent task force, but created by NASA Administrator, Daniel Goldin. The group is taking a focused look at the budget and management challenges facing the ISS effort.
Group members dutifully took notes as NASA managers explained budget authority, obligated funds, billed and unbilled work, program operating plans, cost baselines, liens and threats, offsetting receipts and collections, as well as top-down, bottom-up reviews and uncosted carryovers.
Task force chair, Thomas Young, said the ISS program is being run using methods from the "Dark Ages of program management."
"In this day and time we are enormously better than that," Young said.
"Our NASA people need help," Goldin told the task force.
"We have not been able to accurately predict how much this program is going to cost," Goldin said. While noting that the ISS team is comprised of hardworking and good people, he said that they are working with deficiencies in the management system.
"The object is not to come in as a bunch of gun slingers and criticize. The object is to help these folks figure out how to get a much better cost estimating system…how to do a much better job…and more efficiently manage costs," Goldin said. "They need your help to see things differently," he said.
Poke and probe
Goldin said that the loss of the Challenger orbiter in 1986 was an overriding experience that now permeates NASA's human space flight programs. "It caused people to be more overly cautions, which is good. But on the other hand, the question is how much does it have to cost?," he said.
"You just can't equate money with safety. You have to get at the culture. You have to poke and probe," Goldin said. "Every penny we spend on bureaucracy, and every penny we spend on apparent safety -- not real safety -- it's a penny, a quarter, or a dollar that comes out of science," he said.
Regarding the news that cost-growth now plagues NASA's work on the ISS, Goldin said that early warning is very important.
"If you know in advance and have a problem coming, you can resolve it. We got a real big surprise and didn't have an early warning system," Goldin said.
Safety, science and commitment
"The purpose of the station is not just to build it", the NASA chief said. "The purpose of the station is to do research."
Goldin said there is a balance that must be struck in building the ISS. On the one hand is safety and science, along with commitments to the international partners. On the other hand, how much does the station cost and what's reasonable and the right thing to do, he said.
Admittedly, Goldin said that the answers are going to be painful and difficult for many to accept. "But in life we have to live with priorities," he said.
"Our people don't want to have a shuttle and station space agency. We want to go to Mars. We want to go to the asteroids. We want to look at the origin and destiny of our universe. We want to see if life is ubiquitous," Goldin said

NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin formed an independent
team of scientific, engineers and financial experts to evaluate
the management and budgetary issues facing the ISS
program, the agency announced July 31.
A. Thomas Young, Chairman, former President of Martin-
Marietta Corp., and former director of NASA's Viking missions
to Mars is also a member of the National Academy of
Engineering. He heads the task force:

The above from Space.com

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Why can't science fans make personal donations to NASA ?

Wouldn't it be great if taxpayers could determine where a small percentage of their income taxes would be spent in the government? Let's say 1% of a persons taxes could be sent to any specific area in the government that the person wanted to increase funding to.

For instance: on the tax form, all people could check one of a variety of boxes, that would cause a percentage of their taxes to be sent to NASA. This would be over and above the amount of funding that NASA normally receives. The same would be possible if one wanted to apply funding toward other gov organizations such as retirement, welfare, military defense, ect..

I think that NASA should have some kind of donation program, similar to the way that Public Television is funded today. I'm not saying that NASA should be totally funded by donations, but that people should be allowed to determine were a small percentage of their taxes are spent.

Instead of checking a box on the tax form that sends a dollar to a re-election fund, there should be a way for each person to increase funding to the service of their choice.


Does NASA have any special agency to receive personal donations?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

NASA is a dinosaur.

NASA isn't the glorius agency that we'd wish it is.

Odds are men won't land on Mars in 50 years, let alone in 20.

Why you ask? I hate to be the bringer of bad news. NASA is just our branch of government to launch satelites. The only reason we have a space station is to keep the MANNED spaceprogram from getting tanked. There was talk after the Challenger accident that they should ax the manned space program.

Vola, plans of Space Station Alpha, the ISS, come soon thereafter to save NASA's ass. The Cold War was still on and so Reagan approved funding to show American suppiority.

Ten plus years after the fall of the USSR, the Space Station is the last remnant of Cold War-era planning. So what's next. I haven't heard of any ambitious plan to go to the moon, Mars, or build anything really interesting.

Private industry will have to merge with NASA to give us something worth doing, if not we'll be on Earth FOREVER.