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Hubble Space Telescope
Scientists marvel at the achievements made by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope in this produced movie looking at the crown jewel observatory that has served as our window on the universe.

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SOHO anniversary
10 years ago: The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, a joint European and American Sun-watching probe, blasts off from Cape Canaveral aboard a Lockheed Martin Atlas 2AS rocket.

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Huygens science results
The European Space Agency's Huygens probe, launched from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, descended through the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan and landed on its mysterious surface in January. Scientists hold this news briefing to report on new results from the daring mission.

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Mars Express update
Project scientists working on the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft now orbiting the Red Planet hold a news conference to announce some interesting results from the ongoing mission.

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An American in orbit
Mercury astronaut John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth on February 20, 1962, when he is launched aboard Friendship 7.

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Space Thanksgiving
International Space Station commander Bill McArthur and flight engineer Valery Tokarev mark the Thanksgiving holiday in orbit during this downlinked message.

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Soyuz on the move
Expedition 12 Soyuz commander Valery Tokarev and station commander Bill McArthur temporarily leave the International Space Station. They undocked their Soyuz capsule from the Pirs module and then redocked the craft to the nearby Zarya module. The move clears Pirs for use as the airlock for an upcoming Russian-based spacewalk.

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Pluto New Horizons
Check out NASA's Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft undergoing thermal blanket installation inside the cleanroom at Kennedy Space Center's Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility in preparation for launch in January from the Cape.

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Mountains of creation
A new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveals billowing mountains of dust ablaze with the fires of stellar youth. The majestic infrared view from Spitzer resembles the iconic "Pillars of Creation" picture taken of the Eagle Nebula in visible light by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

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Space history: STS-51A
This week marks the anniversary of arguably the most daring and complex space shuttle mission. The astronauts successfully launched two satellites and then recovered two others during extraordinary spacewalks by astronauts using jet-propelled backpacks and pure muscle power.

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Space station EVA
Commander Bill McArthur and flight engineer Valery Tokarev conduct a 5 1/2-hour spacewalk outside the International Space Station, installing a TV camera, doing repair chores and jettisoning a failed science probe.

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The Earth from space
Return to flight space shuttle commander Eileen Collins narrates an interesting slide show featuring some favorite photographs of Earth taken during her previous shuttle missions.

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An interview with NASA Administrator Mike Griffin
BY WILLIAM HARWOOD
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION
Posted: December 5, 2005

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin - he insists on being called Mike - has little time for pessimists. And only a misinformed pessimist, in his view, would worry overly much about future budgets and the presumption that development of NASA's planned shuttle replacement - the Crew Exploration Vehicle - will be stretched out. Griffin believes the gap between the end of shuttle operations in 2010 and the advent of manned CEV flights will be relatively short, emphasizing that NASA does not need new money to make it happen.

 
Michael Griffin conducts his first news conference as NASA administrator. Credit: NASA
 
In a wide-ranging interview with CBS Space Consultant William Harwood, Griffin also reiterated his strong support for a shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. He hopes to approve a servicing mission shortly after the next shuttle flight, assuming engineers work out ways to inspect the shuttle's heat-shield tiles in the absence of the space station and assuming the next flight suffers no major foam shedding. Certified tile and leading edge repair procedures will not be required for a Hubble flight or any other shuttle mission, Griffin said.

Regarding shuttle operations and the loss of foam from a protuberance air load - PAL - ramp during the shuttle Discovery's return-to-flight mission last July, Griffin said he is hopeful engineers will be able to prove the ramps are not needed, eliminating another source of potentially dangerous debris. But he said it's not yet known how the ongoing analysis will play out or whether it can be completed in time to launch the next mission without PAL ramps.

The telephone interview took place Nov. 23. The questions were shortened and edited by the author; Griffin's answers were only minimally edited. Audio dropouts interrupted the flow of the first few answers.

Q: You said on Capitol Hill a few weeks ago that a Hubble servicing mission was the highest priority of the shuttle program. What did you mean by that?

A: I guess a little more context is appropriate. You look at the fleet as a whole and clearly, the president's highest priority - and it's completely understandable and I completely agree - is ... to use the shuttle to finish the assembly of the space station ... because only the shuttle can do that job. But for any given single mission, I would say that the Hubble servicing represents the highest priority utilization of a single shuttle mission that I can conceive. That's the way in which I meant that. ... Because servicing the Hubble is something only the shuttle can do, it's only one flight and is, therefore, I think a very high agency priority if we can do it technically.

Q: If the next shuttle mission, STS-121, turns out to be a clean flight from a foam shedding/debris point of view, is that enough to clear the way for a Hubble servicing mission?

A: It's not really so much about foam shedding, although we do need to make sure that our fixes have that under control. But it's also about looking at crew timelines for inspections. Bear in mind, if we do the Hubble flight we won't have the space station crew available to do the tile inspections (on the shuttle's belly). That we would have to do with the shuttle crew alone using a camera on the end of a manipulator arm and things like that. So we need to satisfy ourselves that just operating the shuttle within itself and using our new safety-of-flight guidelines that we can do everything we need to do in the context of the available crew resource timeline that we've got. Does that make sense?

Q: It makes perfect sense. But in your public comments, the decision to proceed with a servicing mission is always tied to the success of the next shuttle flight. I think a lot of people assume that refers to foam shedding.

A: It wasn't entirely the case. It's the whole package. Our return to flight sequence was always two flights and we always said we were not going to make operational decisions about what we do with the shuttle until after we return to flight. There's a certain discipline there I want to adhere to. And then secondly, there are very specific things, like how much time do we have available for crew EVA? That depends on what sorts of shuttle inspections (are needed) and other issues.

Q: What about the issue of autonomous repair capability? Do you need a certified autonomous repair technique to fly the mission, or can you fly whatever you have at the time and that's good enough?

A: Well, we're certainly not putting a certified repair capability in series with flying the shuttle to the Hubble or anything else. - (audio dropout) - The CAIB (Columbia Accident Investigation Board) recommendation, which we adopted, was - and I don't have the literal words in front of me - but the spirit of the recommendation was to the extent possible, we should develop a shuttle tile repair capability. And we've spent many, many millions of dollars, I'm tempted to say tens and hundreds of millions of dollars, on shuttle tile repair.

At some point, what you have to honestly say is it's a capability that's so far eluded us. Not every recommendation that a failure board makes is something that can be done. It's sort of like you can tell me I have to be smarter, but achieving that is a more difficult goal. And so, we, NASA, and the contractor community have not yet been able to develop the technology for a workable tile repair solution. We've got some promising candidates, but we would not say that we're there. So we're going to continue to do the best we can, but it can't be in series with flying the shuttle or we'll never fly.

Q: But your decision point on a Hubble mission, depends on the crew timeline, the level of inspection you can do, but there's no hard-and-fast requirement for any specific type of repair capability?

A: Correct, there is not. We do not require a specific tile repair capability in order to be able to do Hubble or any other mission.

Q: To fly a Hubble servicing mission at the end of 2007, which is where it's currently penciled in, NASA would need to name a crew or at least a payload commander sometime next spring based on past mission training templates. Can we expect a decision from you, one way or the other, next summer?

A: We'd like to make the decision after we fly the next flight, we think we'll have all the pieces in place and that will be the last piece. Bear in mind, we're already working on that mission and the phrase I once used was 'betting on the come.' In part because we received congressional direction in '05 to spent up to $291 million on the Hubble servicing mission, so I've had people working at Goddard (Space Flight Center) on that mission since I arrived and they are continuing to work in '06. So the Congress elected - and this is in legislation, this wasn't just language - the Congress elected to risk some of the nation's money on a presumption that we would be able technically to do a Hubble flight. And I support that, I mean, I've said nothing other than that I support that decision on their part, precisely because we needed to get started on exactly the things you said we needed to do, we needed to get started on those ahead of time if we were going to be able to do the mission by early '08.

Q: Right. So I'm assuming if the shuttle flies in the May time frame next year, you would hope to make that decision shortly thereafter.

A: That's exactly right.

Q: That leads into the next question. I know you're still working the shuttle budget in the out years and I know you don't know how many flights will be on the eventual manifest. But if you end up in a squeeze and you end up with less than the 18-plus-one-flights, what is the commitment to Hubble? Is that flight funded separately, or is that still part of the overall shuttle budget and you've got to work it in somehow.

A: Anything involving the '07 budget and what we would do if this or if that is speculative and I just can't go there.

Q: Let me rephrase it. What the question really gets at is your personal commitment to getting this flight off. I'm assuming from everything you're telling me, if it is even remotely humanly possible, you're going to do it.

A: My wishes and my abilities, depending on what kind of financial resources that we have, are not necessarily always co-aligned. We will have to look at our financial picture after the president has released the '07 budget and we'll have to determine at that time where the single Hubble mission fits in. What I'm talking to you about is in the context of today, all the decisions that have been made up to this point. And that's really all I can say.

Q: I understand. But if you end up in a bind, can Congress fund the flight on its own?

A: Article One of the Constitution empowers the Congress to appropriate funds for whatever it chooses. OK? The Congress can do what it pleases and the president can veto the bill or not, Congress can override the veto or not. If someone wishes to contest the issue, it can be taken as a case to the Supreme Court. ... But subject to those restrictions, the Congress can do what it wants.

Q: Let me ask you about a deorbit module for Hubble. Current projections show atmospheric drag won't bring Hubble down until 2020 or thereabouts, right?

A: Mid 2020s.

Q: Someone told me you decided there wasn't much point in worrying about a deorbit module right now because there's plenty of time to do that down the road. Is that right?

A: It was pretty straight forward. If it isn't going to re-enter until the 2020s in the worst case, then I'm not going to spend money on it now.

Q: How is the James Webb Space Telescope doing? It's under a lot of budget and technical pressure right now. Isn't it more important than ever to keep Hubble in operation?

A: With regard to James Webb, what I can say - and this story is already out there - is James Webb is going to be delayed approximately two years, frankly to allow the technology to catch up with the requirements and because we're having to spend a little bit more on that technology than we anticipated doing. And in the context of the fixed budget allocation that we've got, we really don't have any choice except to slip James Webb out a couple of years. I mean James Webb continues to be the National Academy of Science's No. 1 priority in the astronomy line and we continue to agree and respect that priority. So there's no quibble, this is like going back to Hubble, which flew several years later than people had initially hoped and planned simply because it took a while to get it done. So there's no subtlety or mystery here. We'll fly James Webb as soon as we can and we think as soon as we can is a couple of years later than we first thought.

Q: I understand. I guess I was interested in your philosophical approach to Hubble, for lack of a better word.

A: Well, Hubble and James Webb do two different things.

Q: I'm aware of that. But until astronomers get some bigger telescopes on the ground, Hubble still owns the field in certain types of observations. I realize James Webb is optimized for infrared, but having a large operational space telescope strikes me as a valuable thing to have.

A: Well, I agree! (laughter) You know, I like apple pie, too.

Q: OK, I'm sorry I asked that question. That was a long way to go for apple pie! Let's switch gears, unless there's anything else you'd like to add about Hubble that we didn't get to.

A: No, Hubble's a very high priority for us and we're doing what we can. Unfortunately, the Hubble servicing decision was and remains all wrapped up in the whole shuttle return to flight, which has been a difficult pill for NASA to swallow. But we're getting there.

Q: Let's talk about that return to flight for a moment. When will you have firm manifest in hand?

A: Well, I can talk about '07 and beyond after the first week of February in '07, which is when the president releases his budget for the year.

Q: Until that point, it's 18 station flights and one Hubble servicing mission?

A: Until that point, the last words from the administration on the subject are that the United States is committed to the completion of the international space station using the space shuttle and the flight sequence that we think gets that done is 18 flights.

Q: Understood. Let's see, what else can I ask you about shuttle that you can answer?

A: I can talk to you a lot about hypersonic turbulent boundary layer transition if that's where you want to go. ... No, I'm joking. I mean I can, but I don't think that's what you want for a news story.

Q: Let me ask you about schedule pressure. (Shuttle program manager) Wayne Hale bristles a bit when asked about launch dates for STS-121 and he says the only schedule pressure comes from the media. But given the 2010 deadline for retiring the shuttle, it strikes me that schedule pressure today is more than it's ever been.

A: I would not say there is more schedule pressure than there ever has been. The fact is that in large, important, high-visibility programs there is always cost pressure, technical performance pressure and schedule pressure. I've worked large, important, high-visibility programs for half my life in DOD and NASA and I've never seen one where schedule was not a factor. So yes, schedule's a factor. What we pay managers, senior management and program managers for is the ability to balance all those pressures in a healthy way. Where we got hurt on Challenger and then again on Columbia was when we didn't balance them in a healthy and correct way. We must resolve never to do that again. I think Wayne Hale is a great guy in his job, he knows what he's doing, he knows how to balance technical costs and schedule pressures and he's doing it.

Q: A challenging job...

A: It is. He knows what he's doing, I have great confidence in him. We're setting up to try to fly in May. You'll never fly one day earlier than you try to fly. If something happens that we can't make May, we'll move it. But that's where we're going.

Q: There's talk about taking the PAL (protuberance air load) ramp off the external fuel tank. That strikes me as an administrator-level decision. What's it going to take for the engineers to prove to you that's OK to do?

A: Well, anything significantly involving the shuttle, much as I hate to micromanage guys who work for me, ends up as an administrator-level decision. Because of the very simple fact that anything that goes wrong with the shuttle gets hung around my neck. That goes with the job. And so, it's a team process. We've got to make these decisions together.

Q: Right, but it struck me that's not an everyday sort of decision.

A: No, it's not. So what does it take to convince me?

(Editor's note: The PAL ramps were put on the shuttle's external tank to smooth the flow of supersonic air across an externally mounted cable tray and two pressurization lines, one carrying oxygen and the other hydrogen. When the space shuttle rockets through the sound barrier, the air flow generated by the tips of the two solid-fuel boosters, can move across the external tank components at near right angles. The PAL ramps were added when the tank was designed to deflect this airflow up and over the pressurization lines and cable tray. During Discovery's launching last July, a one-pound chunk of foam from the liquid hydrogen PAL ramp separated and fell away just after booster separation. It is not yet clear what caused the foam to separate and engineers are re-assessing whether the PAL ramps are, in fact, needed.)

A: (The PAL ramp) was put on there in the old days as what I would characterize as a suspenders and belt approach. The analysis (of the forces involved) is very difficult to do. Most folks, if you asked them, would say I don't really think we need that (but) It was the kind of thing that was technically very difficult to prove because it's a complex aerodynamic flow field, multi-mach number range, yada, yada, yada. So the suspenders and belt approach is, I don't think I really need (the PAL ramp) but I'm going to put it on there anyway because what can it hurt? Well, what it can hurt is if it falls off!

All things being equal, with the new sensitivity to foam release that has resulted in the wake of STS-107, now we no longer take the attitude well, I'll put some foam on there, what can it hurt? You with me? If we're going to put foam on something it better be that we really need the foam to be there. On the last flight, STS-114 ... we went to the trouble ... to calculate aerodynamically the very complex flow field surrounding the bipod structure and we concluded we don't need a bipod ramp and we don't need bipod ramp foam. That's what we hope to do with the PAL ramp. We're not there yet.

Q: It would be good if you could do it.

A: You bet! That's the first question I asked back in August. Do I think it's realistic for STS-121? I don't know. I need to sit with the guys and understand where they are on the CFD (computational fluid dynamics) analysis of the whole PAL ramp to see if we can get by without the foam. This particular subject, that kind of CFD analysis, is stuff I know as well as anybody walking around. So I'm happy to sit and talk with them, I just haven't done it yet.

Q: I understand. OK. Let's see, IÕm going to skip a couple of questions because I'm running out of time. Here's a dumb question. At some point, the shuttles will fly their last mission. Have you given any thought to where they're going to end up? I assume one goes to the Smithsonian one day?

A: You're so far ahead of me, can I understudy you? (laughter) I have no idea. And you've got a little more time.

Public Affairs Representative: The normal protocol is the Smithsonian (Institution) gets first dibs on it. We're still working those scenarios. We're going to finish up the shuttle flights and then we'll worry about that.

Q: OK, let's see here. Let me ask you one more philosophical question about the shuttle. Everyone I talk to these days believes that any more foam incidents, the program is over. If you talk to people in a bar, that's what they all say. Do you buy that? In other words, you've got to get this fixed.

A: Well, we know we've got to fix the foam because we don't want to damage the vehicle or kill anybody. But I think it's too steep of a cliff, it's too black and white to say you know, one more piece of foam falls off and the shuttle doesnÕt fly anymore. It has to be looked at in the context of how big of a piece of foam, where did it come from, how thoroughly or late in the flight did it release, do we understand why it came off? There are a whole bunch of things. Foam that comes off at very slow speeds doesn't hurt anybody, it can't possibly. Foam that comes off at very high altitudes can't possibly hurt anybody. It's that middle range of high speed and mid altitude that's an issue. And you know all this. I'm an engineer, the people that I want to make this decision are engineers, we've got to look at what actually occurs before we make any decisions.

Q: I'm talking about that middle-range kind of foam.

A: That context is way too black and white.

Q: OK, well that's the answer. Let me ask you another one along those lines that's the same kind of thing you pick up chatting with people in my neighborhood who work for NASA. It goes like this: You've got the war in Iraq, the cost of hurricane recovery, budget deficits will be an election issue at some point and whenever that happens, NASA is always a target, CEV will get stretched out, there will be a long gap between CEV and the end of shuttle and I'm depressed. What do you say to those people?

A: What I say to those people, because I get the same questions, is the following. Look, at 56 I'm old enough to have lived through this transition before as a working engineer in the space business and what they're saying is a very pessimistic view, that inevitably we will repeat with the transition between shuttle and CEV the kinds of things that happened to us that we now regret that occurred between Apollo and shuttle. That's what they're saying. That we're going to have this huge multi-year gap and they're depressed, for all the reasons you and I would both know.

So what I'm saying is, I'm working very hard to see to it that whatever mistakes we make in the future, that's not one of them. We have on the front end of this difficult budget future we face, we've made hard choices to cancel technology and research that I would like to do, that I would really like to do, that I've cancelled things that I would really like to do because of the higher priority that I've accorded to the president's vision, which is to fly out the shuttle fleet, retire it in 2010 and replace it with a CEV. And so that's what's getting our attention here at NASA, fulfilling the president's goals.

Q: Part of the concern people have is that the budget is out of your control.

A: I think the control that I have is on the front end of the program where the crucial decisions are being made. We've designed the CEV/CLV system to be well within the state of the art of American technology, we're deliberately not trying to push technology boundaries. We've designed it to stay within the funding allocations that OMB (Office of Management and Budget) has given us. OK? We've done everything in our power to see to it that the kind of stretch out that people are predicting five years ahead of time doesn't happen. Part of my job is to be a leader and a visionary and to be positively focused and upward looking and give people a reason to believe we can accomplish things. And we can. I can't ever tolerate for very long in my presence the kind of pessimism that you're talking about.

Q: Well it's out there.

A: It is and I try to correct it wherever I go. We're doing today the things we need to do to minimize the kinds of problems that you are talking about. And your article should contain that.

Q: Oh, it will.

A: We're doing today the things we need to do to prevent the kinds of concerns you are raising from coming true.

Q: Before I shift gears again, when do you guys plan to start modifying one of the shuttle launch pads to support CEV?

A: Oh man, I don't know.

Q: Well, you're going to fly pretty soon.

A: You're beating me too much. I don't know. Ask me after we have an internal Constellation review coming up in the next month or so and the ground element is one element of that. At that point, I'm sure either me or Scotty Horowitz or somebody will be happy to talk to you.

Q: You recently described NASA's new moon program as "Apollo on steroids." Is that enough? I remember listening to the president's speech back in 2004 and I was envisioning a permanent base on the moon. But you're talking about four people on the moon for a few weeks at a time. Is "Apollo on steroids" enough to stave off the kind of criticism that will ultimately come up from people who won't want to spend the money on this? Is that justification enough? It obviously is in your opinion, but why?

A: Let me separate that question into the two parts that it contains. When you say talking about budget and the people who don't want to spend the money on this, let me make the point that we're not talking here about new money, we're talking about re-directing the money that NASA has been allocated in the past and in all likelihood will be allocated in the future to execute its mission, one of whose main components is space flight. What we're talking about is doing different things with the human space flight money. So instead of flying the shuttle to the space station, we're going to be sustaining the station with the CEV and CLV and we're also going to be taking the CEV and lunar landers to the moon. So it's about doing different things with the manned space flight money that we have than we have been doing. So that's point one and I would want to make that point very strongly.

Now the second point is, the architecture we released is a transportation architecture, it's how do we get to the moon. Now pardon me for behaving like an engineer, sorry, but I happen to think that's the first step. Step two is, what do you do when you get to the moon? What we've done is to craft a system which can drop 21 metric tons of dry weight, net payload on the moon with every flight. And it can drop more on the moon if you use it in an unmanned mode as a one-way autonomous mission. Now that allows you the components to build a research station on the moon, a lunar base if you choose to use those words, it allows you the components to build that base, that research station - or not - as the nation would choose to do at that time. So what we've done is to put in place an architecture which can allow you to have as much or as little lunar base as the nation wants to a decade or a decade and a half from now.

So what we've done is offered a program where a lunar base can be built by the yard if people want, but does not cause you to have to buy into some, you know, non exit ramp program right from the start. OK? That's what I would like people to focus on. But at the end of the day, this system can drop 21 tons of dry weight, landed payload on the moon every time it flies. ... And the lunar lander will be designed to leave as much behind on every flight as it can do. Because what we leave behind is going to be, flight by flight, that's how we'll build up the lunar base, to the extent that people want to do that. And I hope that they will choose to. But by starting now on the path of this program, they are not buying into something at a later time that they don't choose to do.

Public Affairs Representative: We've got time for one more question.

Q: Are you going to stay on when the president leaves office?

A: Well, that will be up to the next president.

Q: But I mean you're available to do that if the next president asks you?

A: We'll see.

Q: I didn't know if you might throw up your hands by that point and say "I'm outta here."

A: We'll see if I'm still alive, Bill (laughter).