CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Dec. 27 (UPI) -- Guided by a new budget-conscious administrator, NASA faces the new year with plans for continued expansion of the International Space Station, an upgrade to the Hubble Space Telescope and the launch of the last Great Observatory -- an infrared telescope that will expose a previously unseen region of the universe.
Sean O'Keefe, former deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, takes the helm of the world's premier space agency with station cost overruns topping his to-do list.
NASA's attempts to deal with its $4 billion debt by cutting equipment needed to expand the crew size from three to seven members has outraged station partners, who have spent billions building modules and training scientists for missions that may never be flown.
Three-member crews are not enough to operate a viable space station for world-class research, the European Space Agency said in response to a NASA Advisory Council report supporting NASA's attempts to rein in station costs.
"Our future challenges are formidable, but our resolve to overcome those challenges is equally intense," said Daniel Mulville, NASA's interim administrator.
While the dispute continues, NASA is preparing five shuttle missions to the space station in 2002 to deliver new exterior truss segments, carts to hold equipment during spacewalks and a mobile base and transporter for the station's robotic arm, which will allow it to crawl, inchworm-fashion, along the trusses.
The first shuttle launch of the year, however, will be a servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. The observatory will be outfitted with a new higher-resolution camera and other upgrades on a flight scheduled for launch on Feb. 21.
"It's going to be a gangbusters camera," said program scientist David Leckrone.
With 10 times the efficiency of Hubble's current camera, the new imager will be able to see fainter light and cover a broader field of view with high resolution, said Leckrone.
Hubble's long-awaited sister telescope, the Space Infrared Telescope Facility, is scheduled to be put into orbit aboard an unmanned rocket in July. The European Space Agency also plans to add a new gamma ray telescope to the orbital observatory network in October.
Other science satellites heading to the launch pad in 2002 include Contour, a mission to explore the nucleus of at least two comets, a gravity probe to test Einstein's theory of relativity and spacecraft to study the sun, monitor Earth's oceans, track interstellar plasma and collect data on the weather.
Commercial launch service providers Boeing, manufacturer of the Delta rocket, and Lockheed Martin, which builds the Atlas, are scheduled to debut their newest boosters in April and May. The Delta 4 and Atlas 5, which were developed in partnership with the U.S. Air Force, are both scheduled to carry commercial communications satellites into orbit on their maiden flights.
Competitor Arianespace plans to relaunch its heavy-lift Arian 5 rocket, which has been grounded by technical problems since the summer.
The Chinese space agency plans an ambitious series of tests aimed at launching its first people into orbit in 2003. Russia is continuing its efforts to market spaceflight commercially, with plans to include a South African businessman, Mark Shuttleworth, on a Soyuz crew in April that will deliver a new lifeboat to the International Space Station.
Another newcomer to space in 2002 will be Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut. Ramon is a member of a shuttle crew slated to fly a 16-day space research mission in June.
