NASA and its crews still have the power to inspire

NASA and its crews still have the power to inspire

NASA has been doing amazing things for more than a half century, and it is easy for people to take it for granted.

The space agency was created by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1958, and it almost defies imagination that just 11 years later, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin walked on the moon.

Since then, the biggest headlines have been captured by two NASA missions that failed, the losses of the shuttles Challenger and Columbia, in 1986 and 2003 respectively. Seven astronauts died in each.

But the men and women of NASA still have the ability to inspire. Anyone who has been paying even the slightest attention in recent days can’t help but be awestruck by the accomplishments of the crew of the shuttle Atlantis, which is nearing the end of an 11-day mission.

An aging space shuttle sidled up to an aging Hubble Space Telescope — both past their presumed expiration dates when they were designed — and gave each other a boost.

The Hubble telescope has given the world incredible photographs of outer space, including exploding stars and colliding galaxies. It has also given scientists libraries full of new information about the history of the universe. But the Hubble, which is approaching its 20th birthday, had already outlived its projected life by five years. And now it has five years more.

A tough job

Teams of astronauts inside and outside Atlantis managed to refurbish a telescope that is as big as a school bus while orbiting 350 miles above earth at a speed of 22,000 mph. Shuttle crews had worked on Hubble before, but in ways far less technologically ambitious or physically exhausting. The space walking astronauts worked in pairs outside the shuttle for stretches approaching eight hours. They removed frozen bolts without benefit of Liquid Wrench and took off a panel that was held in place by 111 tiny screws. They did all this while wearing gloves that are five layers thick and while working with sharp tools and circuit boards capable of inflicting a cut in their space suits that could have been fatal.

They gave Hubble an estimated five more years of life and a new capability to see hundreds of light years into space. They also attached a docking ring to Hubble that will be used sometime after 2020 to grab the telescope and pull it into a fatally low orbit. That job will be done by a robot launched from a rocket, not by a shuttle crew.

The shuttles have only three more missions this year and five in 2010. The last shuttle mission is scheduled for September 2010 and will be the 134th flight of the shuttle fleet.

Most of the shuttle missions over the last decade have been to the International Space Station, and if the shuttles are retired on schedule, the United States will have to rely on Russia for transport to and from the station until the next generation of U.S. space vehicles is launched in five years.

NASA is projecting a return to the moon in 2020, and after that, unmanned and manned missions to Mars.

Those timetables may be subject to change if a new space race develops between the United States and China. It is likely that China will send an unmanned mission to the moon next year. It will be interesting to see how that event plays out with the American people. But whether space exploration is viewed once again as a race, or just as an adventure, it cannot be ignored. The United States would not have attained scientific and economic superiority on earth without the cutting edge science that it developed in space.