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.

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.

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

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 NASA's weather equipment is outdated and inadequate, according to Charles L. Hosler, a Penn State University meteorology professor who headed a National Research Council panel that studied NASA's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.

WASHINGTON - The International Space Station regained contact with NASA controllers in Houston after nearly three hours of accidental quiet, the space agency says. Officials say the six crew members and station are fine and had no problem during the brief outage. NASA spokesman Josh Byerly said something went wrong about 9:45 a.m. Eastern time Tuesday during a computer software update on the station. The outpost abruptly lost all communication, voice, and command from Houston. Communication was restored less than three hours later, Byerly said "We've got our command and control back," he said.

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)

DERRICK PITTS, chief astronomer at the Franklin Institute, is a star in his own right, with regular TV and radio gigs and the occasional guest spot with Stephen Colbert or Craig Ferguson. He has also trained for suborbital space flight and is one of NASA's "solar-system ambassadors. " But what he really loves is turning people on to the stars in the night sky. He'll do that in a big way April 26 - the official Astronomy Night for the upcoming Philadelphia Science Fesitval. On Astronomy Night, Pitts and other astronomers will invite Earthlings in Philly to gaze through telescopes around town into the great beyond.

WASHINGTON - The next giant leap in space exploration may be a short hop on a small space rock. This week, President Obama will request $105 million in NASA's 2014 budget for a mission that would capture a small asteroid, tug it near the moon, and later send astronauts to study it and grab samples. The asteroid-capturing robot could launch as soon as 2017, with astronauts flying to meet it near the moon by 2021, according to a NASA briefing presented to Congressrecently. The president's request includes $78 million for NASA to develop technologies for the project and $27 million for beefing up the agency's asteroid-detection work.

When an unexpected visitor comes crashing into Earth with the force of 20 atomic bombs, Congress sits up and notices. And then schedules a meeting. The House of Representatives heard testimony Tuesday about the meteor that surprised the world Feb. 15 when it lit up the Russian sky with the light of a thousand suns. Neither the head of NASA nor the commander of the Air Force Space Command had comforting words for the congressmen. Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.) asked what NASA director Charles F. Bolden Jr. what the space agency could do if, with only three weeks notice, a large asteroid was heading on a collision course with our planet.

WASHINGTON - The International Space Station regained contact with NASA controllers in Houston after nearly three hours of accidental quiet, the space agency says. Officials say the six crew members and station are fine and had no problem during the brief outage. NASA spokesman Josh Byerly said something went wrong about 9:45 a.m. Eastern time Tuesday during a computer software update on the station. The outpost abruptly lost all communication, voice, and command from Houston. Communication was restored less than three hours later, Byerly said "We've got our command and control back," he said.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Schoolchildren joined NASA managers and relatives of the lost crew of space shuttle Columbia on Friday to mark the 10th anniversary of the tragedy and remember the seven astronauts who died. More than 300 people gathered at Kennedy Space Center for the outdoor ceremony, just a few miles from where Columbia was supposed to land on Feb. 1, 2003, after a 16-day science mission. It instead burst apart in the sky over Texas, 16 minutes from home. Representing the families of the Columbia seven, the widow of commander Rick Husband told the audience that the accident was so unexpected and the shock so intense, "that even tears were not freely able to fall.

Dyer Brainerd Holmes, 91, director of manned space flight for NASA when Americans were making early forays into space in the early 1960s, has died. His death Jan. 11 in Memphis was of complications from pneumonia, his stepson, Pierce Ledbetter, said. Mr. Holmes joined NASA as director of manned space flight in October 1961, according to the NASA History Office. He resigned in June 1963. During his time at NASA, John Glenn became the first U.S. astronaut in orbit, on Feb. 20, 1962, on Mercury-Atlas 6. Scott Carpenter followed by riding Mercury-Atlas 7 into space May 24 the same year.

NASA today released satellite images documenting the off-the-charts pollution that has blanketed Beijing with thick smog. The abysmal air quality in the Chinese capital has led the government to order factories to reduce emissions and issue warnings to residents to stay inside. The pictures from NASA's Terra satellite, taken January 14, show the choking haze enveloping most of northeast China. The wave of pollution peaked Saturday. Expected to last through Tuesday, it was the severest smog since the government began releasing figures on PM2.5 particles, among the worst pollutants, early last year in response to a public outcry.

WASHINGTON - NASA, the agency that epitomized the Right Stuff, looks lost in space and doesn't have a clear sense of where it is going, an independent panel of science and engineering experts said in a stinging report Wednesday. The report by a panel of the National Academy of Sciences doesn't blame NASA; it faults the president, Congress, and the nation for not giving better direction. It also said NASA was doing little to further a White House goal of sending astronauts to an asteroid.

PASADENA, Calif. - The landing site of the Mars rover Curiosity was once covered with fast-moving and possibly waist-high water that could have possibly supported life, NASA scientists announced Thursday. While planetary scientists have often speculated that the now-desiccated surface of Mars was once wet, Curiosity cameras provided the first proof that flowing water was present on a least one part of Mars for "thousands or millions of years. " The early finding led Mars Science Laboratory mission top scientist John Grotzinger to conclude that Curiosity had already found a potentially "habitable" site - a central goal of the mission - well before heading to its primary destination.

PASADENA, Calif. - The robotic explorer Curiosity's daring plunge through the pink skies of Mars was more than perfect. It landed with spectacular style, a NASA scientist said, describing the first images of its mechanical gymnastics. Hours after NASA learned the rover had arrived on target, engineers and scientists got the first glimpses of the intricate maneuvers it made to hit the Martian soil safely. "It's a spectacular image," NASA research scientist Luther Beegle said, as NASA planned to release a fresh black-and-white picture.