Nasa

Comparisons of NASA with Watergate gain credence. The administration's obsession with full-speed-ahead mentality has destroyed seven astronauts, the image of the space program and extended to all branches of government and industry. We've seen the same failures extended to the several nuclear weapon's failures - Pershing, cruise, MX. Congress must investigate fully NASA and its links to weapons systems. It is especially important to investigate the Pentagon whose mentality personifies these failures.

The nation's space agency sent men to the moon 33 years ago, but its plan to sponsor a mini-book documenting that those Apollo landings really happened was aborted this week by bad publicity. After decades of mostly ignoring those who were skeptical about the moon landings, NASA hired Houston author and aerospace engineer Jim Oberg this fall to write a 10-chapter "monograph" for $15,000. His mission was to deliver a point-by-point rebuttal of conspiracy theorists who say the six Apollo moon landings were hoaxes.

NASA has the nerve to be mad because President Obama said, with our economy, why should we spend millions to go back to the moon or explore Mars? Right-wing America is using every excuse to hate our president, though we finally have someone in office who doesn't lie to all the other races. Carlton R. Manley, Philadelphia

WASHINGTON - Looking for a job? NASA is hiring astronauts. You can even apply online at a giant government jobs website (). There's only one hitch: NASA doesn't have its own spaceship anymore and is sending fewer fliers into orbit right now. "The experience is well worth the wait," promised Janet Kavandi, NASA flight crew operations director, as the agency started a public search Tuesday for new astronauts. There will be flights, but not many, with the shuttle fleet retired.

Despite new restrictions requiring that the space shuttle be launched only in near-perfect weather, the head of an outside panel that reviewed NASA's weather-detection systems says the agency continues to take unnecessary risks. NASA's weather equipment is outdated and inadequate, according to Charles L. Hosler, a Penn State University meteorology professor who headed a National Research Council panel that studied NASA's weather-prediction capability. "It's horse-and-buggy" weather prediction, Hosler said in a phone interview from Penn State last week.

A NASA research rocket that had flown successfully 120 consecutive times misfired over the New Mexico desert two weeks ago - the fourth U.S. space launch vehicle to fail this year. The government, whose space program is under pressure because of the recent explosions of the much larger Titan and Delta rockets and the space shuttle, did not announce the April 25 failure of a Nike Orion rocket carrying a pollution-sampling device. The accident came to light yesterday as NASA, apparently bowing to a demand by the presidential Challenger commission, announced that it is asking independent experts to oversee the redesign of the solid booster rocket joint that is thought to have caused the space shuttle to explode Jan. 28. The Nike rocket that failed two weeks ago dates back to the early 1950s when it was developed as a surface-to-air missile against aircraft.

Venus was the goddess of love, but Mars is the big cosmic tease. No, the Red Planet will not appear as big as the full moon on Aug. 27. Not even close. Unless your flying saucer is parked a sun's diameter or two from its fourth planet. Sillier still, Mars will not even be visible at night on that date. So do not, NASA advises, believe "The Confusing-Email-About-Mars-You-Should-Delete-and-Not-Forward-to-Anyone-Except-Your-In-Laws. " Really, that was NASA's term.

The dramatic, color-enhanced pictures were beamed over NASA's closed- circuit television system here from the satellite as it swooped toward the coal-black heart of Halley's comet in deep space. But the commentator had a thick, Teutonic accent. It was ESA, the 11- nation European Space Agency, not NASA, controlling the Giotto satellite from a center in Darmstadt, West Germany. The mid-March encounter with Halley's comet marked a historic time in human space exploration, a watershed perhaps, with the broadest international participation ever.

Three decades ago, ion propulsion was too advanced even for the Starship Enterprise. But today, it already has succeeded in gently propelling a spacecraft to an asteroid 120 million miles away. NASA scientists last week toasted their futuristic spacecraft's success in reaching asteroid Braille powered by the ion drive and controlled by an automatic on-board system capable of navigating by the stars. The mission also tested a computer capable of taking over control of the craft.

After a long hiatus, America's space program is on a roll. Norman Thagard just broke a 20-year-old American space endurance record aboard Mir, the Russian space station. The Hubble Space Telescope is making discoveries almost every week. Four hundred million miles from Earth, the Galileo spacecraft bound for Jupiter successfully dispatched a probe that for the first time ever will penetrate the atmosphere of the huge gaseous planet. Two other spacecraft are scheduled to be launched to Mars in 1996 to explore for evidence of water, and additional scientific probes and rovers (mobile robots)

WASHINGTON - There's no firm date yet, but sometime in early 2014, NASA intends to take its first major step toward rebuilding its human spaceflight program. The milestone is the maiden test flight of its Orion spacecraft, a launch that has come into sharper relief in the three months since NASA and manufacturer Lockheed Martin announced it. As planned, an unmanned Orion capsule will begin its journey at Cape Canaveral and take two loops around Earth before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.

"The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home. In a cosmic perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is young and curious and brave and shows much promise. I believe our future depends powerfully on how well we understand this Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky. " - Carl Sagan Chris Gibbons is a Philadelphia writer The recent news of NASA's incredible discovery streamed across the Internet on Dec. 20: "The First Earth-Sized Planets Found Beyond Our Solar System.

LOS ANGELES - The New Year's countdown to the moon has begun. NASA said Wednesday that its twin spacecraft were on course to arrive back-to-back at the moon after a 31/2-month journey. "We're on our way there," said project manager David Lehman of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the $496 million mission. The Grail probes - short for Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory - won't land on the lunar surface. Instead, they were poised to slip into orbit to study the uneven lunar gravity field.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - As big as a car and as well-equipped as a laboratory, NASA's newest Mars rover blows away its predecessors in size and skill. Nicknamed Curiosity and scheduled for launch Saturday, the rover has a 7-foot arm tipped with a jackhammer and a laser to break through the Martian red rock. What really makes it stand out: It can analyze rocks and soil with unprecedented accuracy. "This is a Mars scientist's dream machine," said NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Ashwin Vasavada, the deputy project scientist.

WASHINGTON - Looking for a job? NASA is hiring astronauts. You can even apply online at a giant government jobs website (). There's only one hitch: NASA doesn't have its own spaceship anymore and is sending fewer fliers into orbit right now. "The experience is well worth the wait," promised Janet Kavandi, NASA flight crew operations director, as the agency started a public search Tuesday for new astronauts. There will be flights, but not many, with the shuttle fleet retired.

WASHINGTON - It's as big as a bus and weighs 6 tons, but officials probably will never be able to pinpoint exactly where a massive NASA satellite plummeted to Earth. NASA space junk scientists believe that all - or nearly all - of the parts of their 20-year-old dead satellite safely plunged into the Pacific Ocean, likely missing land. But if their estimates are off, by only five minutes or so, fiery pieces could have fallen on parts of northwestern North America. No injuries or damage have been reported on land, which NASA officials said was a good indication the satellite went into the ocean.

WASHINGTON - To soar far away from Earth and even on to Mars, NASA has dreamed up the world's most powerful rocket, a behemoth that borrows from the workhorse liquid-fuel rockets that sent Apollo missions into space four decades ago. But with a price tag that some estimate at $35 billion, it might not fly with Congress. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and several members of Congress announced the Obama administration's much-delayed general plans Wednesday for its rocket design, called the Space Launch System.

A CRACKED cosmonaut helmet, footsteps in the moon dust, a mysterious flash of light outside a spaceship window - these are some of the images the Weinstein Co. has released from "Apollo 18," a documentary-style sci-fi thriller opening today that the studio is marketing as a movie culled from "found footage" from a U.S. space mission. "In 1972, the United States sent two astronauts on a secret mission to the moon," the trailer says. "Despite decades of denial by NASA and the Department of Defense, classified footage of the mission was leaked to the media.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - A Russian space-station supply ship failed to reach orbit Wednesday and crashed with a thunderous boom into Siberia, rattling NASA and others in this new era without any shuttles to bail out the orbiting outpost. The launch failure came barely a month after NASA's final shuttle flight. While the International Space Station has more than enough supplies, the rocket accident threatens to delay the launch of the next station crew just a month away. The upper stage of the Soyuz rocket that failed is similar to the ones used to launch astronauts.

The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History By Ben Mezrich Doubleday. 308 pp. $26.95 Reviewed by Ben Tarnoff In the summer of 2002, three young NASA employees stole a quarter-pound of moon rocks and tried selling them online to a Belgian collector. He alerted the FBI, and together they orchestrated the sting that led to the robbers' arrest. The rocks were returned - lunar samples from the Apollo missions, valued in the vicinity of $20 million - and the ringleader, 25-year-old Thad Roberts, went to prison for eight years.