NASA must be eagerly awaiting the New Year following its string of disasters in 1999. The US space administration, which has done so much for space exploration this century, is hardly ending it on a high note.
The latest setback - the further delay of the crucial Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission following the discovery of yet more problems with the ageing Space Shuttle fleet - just sums up the year, which has probably been the worst for the US space industry since the loss of the Challenger Shuttle in 1986.
NASA has launched just two Space Shuttle missions this year following the virtual grounding of the fleet through damage caused by wear and tear, while two multi-million dollar Mars missions have failed - one due to a simple, yet disastrous, mix up between metric and imperial measures - forcing a complete rethink on future Mars exploration. Furthermore, International Space Station completion has been pushed back to 2007 - 11 years behind the original schedule - and not just because of Russian delays.
The jury is still out on whether NASA's "faster, better, cheaper" approach to spaceflight, championed by administrator Dan Goldin, is the root of the problems or just a contributory factor.
But NASA can't take all of the blame. The spotlight is also on the US Government which, although keen to maintain the country's lead in the space race, is not quite as keen to stump up the cash required to be a space leader. US Congress is cutting NASA's budget year after year and, although NASA faces the same budgetary restrictions as any other federal agency, space exploration cannot be done on a shoestring, even if it does run into billions of dollars.
Perhaps now is the time for NASA to completely review its future plans before confidence in it is further eroded and anything more than just billion-dollar hardware is lost.
Source: Flight International
