Nasa

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)

Star Trek and sci-fi movies may have taken some of the flash out of space technology, but NASA proved to the students of Simmons Elementary School that the real world's still a turn-on, too. It's simple: Space fascinates kids, and that's what NASA's all about. "If you ask these kids now how many want to be astronauts, they'll all raise their hands," said Ronald P. Ernst, an aerospace education specialist from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "NASA wants that interest.

It begins to look as if something greater than the lone space shuttle Challenger exploded devastatingly over the Atlantic. The intervening two weeks offer evidence that America's space agency is also in danger of disintegration. At the least, potentially irreparable harm is being done to public confidence in that crucially important U.S. institution - a fact that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) belatedly has recognized with Tuesday's decision to make available previously withheld internal documents.

Fans of the space shuttle have likened it to an eagle; critics have called it a turkey. I have come to see it as an albatross. It hangs around the neck of NASA, too heavy to fly and too dear to abandon. Originally proposed to make spaceflight "routine" and "economical," the shuttle has done neither. Because of it, the country now lacks ready access to space, its expendable launch vehicles have been abandoned, and other space projects have been deferred or canceled. And out of all the baleful effects that the shuttle has had on NASA, not the least important is the accelerated militarization of the agency.

The recovery of the crew cabin from the Challenger space shuttle raises the strong possibility that on Jan. 28, when the disaster occurred, government officials engaged in a fraud upon the American people. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) may on that day have made a quick decision to conceal and distort the facts concerning the deaths of the seven on board. Their motive? To protect the space program's image and its future budgets. It is now clear that there was no "explosion.

On Jan. 28, Col. Guion S. Bluford Jr. was relaxing at home with the television and radio off when the phone rang. It was his wife, Linda, calling to ask him about the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. "I didn't know it had happened. I wasn't watching it live," the Philadelphia native said Friday afternoon at Montgomery County Community College before giving that school's commencement address. "I think all of us took it for granted. We didn't pay attention to specific launches.

When Christa McAuliffe won NASA's teacher-in-space contest, she became an instant celebrity. Television and radio producers, and talk-show hosts all wanted to book her for appearances following the Challenger flight. While this publicity spruced up NASA's image, life for Christa's husband and children changed dramatically - and as it turned out, forever. The fourth in a five-part series. With a push from NASA, the media stumbled upon a new concept: the teacher as hero. Forget Rambo, the rock 'n' roll idols and the recalcitrant million- dollar athletes.

While my heart grieves along with the rest of the world for the astronauts, realism keeps creeping into my grief. We just had to send that second flight up on the heels of the flight that had just returned. Why? I get the gut feeling that a certain recklessness has crept into the program. In facing reality, man has not conquered the mysteries on this planet where we all must live, the planet God put us on. We are riddled with everything imaginable: AIDS, cancer, drugs, poisoned environment, uncontrolled corruption.

The hearings on the shuttle disaster indicate that there appears to be an almost incestuous relationship and family back-patting among upper management in NASA. It appears that the longer the employment of a particular management specialist, the less his ability to objectively view, review and absorb information outside his purview. For NASA to demand written rationale for postponing the launching when time was of the essence was ludicrous. NASA's actions were reactions - officials were not going to absorb information particularly if it was contrary to their chain of command decisions.

Environmental Tectonics Corp., a Southampton-based maker of flight and driving simulators and other devices, announced today that it is expanding its board with the addition of a sixth member. Winston E. Scott, a retired U.S. Navy caption living in Florida, was named to the board. Scott, who is dean of the Florida Institute of Technology's College of Aeronautics, was a mission specialist on two NASA shuttle flights, in 1996 and in 1997. (Read his NASA biography here .).    - Roslyn Rudolph