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Too many projects, not enough NASA

The agency will launch a new space lab, but some think another project deserves priority.

WASHINGTON - After years of delays, NASA hopes to launch this week a European-built laboratory that will greatly expand the research capability of the international space station. But while some call it a milestone, the launch has focused new attention on the space agency's earlier decision to back out of plans to send up a different, $1.5-billion device - one that many scientists contend would produce far more significant knowledge.

The instrument, which would detect and measure cosmic rays in a new way, took 500 physicists from around the world 12 years to build. But with room on the 10 remaining shuttle missions to the space station in short supply, many fear it will remain forever warehoused on Earth, becoming the most sophisticated and costly white elephant of the space era.

As a result, the imminent launch of the Columbus laboratory - the kind of scientific workspace that the station's backers always said would be its reason for being - will take place under something of a cloud.

"We are very excited about the launch of Columbus and believe this will be a major step forward for the international space station," said Martin Zell, who is involved with the European space laboratory as head of research operations for the European Space Agency, and is also a coordinator for development of the cosmic ray project.

"But if the (other device) does not make it to the station, it will be a very great setback for the space community and the ISS," Zell said. "It would be the most visible, perhaps the most exciting, experiment on the station."

New look at universe

Whereas the Columbus laboratory will allow scientists to conduct long-term biological, fluid and materials science research in weightless conditions, the cosmic ray detector - called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer - would look for evidence of how the universe formed. It would search in particular for evidence of the existence and workings of dark matter and antimatter, which theorists have concluded must exist but has never been identified or measured.

The science is considered innovative and important - a major Department of Energy scientific review recently concluded it "may well make some fundamental discoveries." But the fate of the instrument also has significant implications for international cooperation in space.

"The credibility of the United States is at stake here, because NASA made a commitment to bring Columbus and AMS to the space station," said Samuel Ting, a Nobel laureate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who conceived the project in 1994 and drew in collaborators from 60 institutes in 16 nations to build and fund it. "After all this work, it would be a terrible blow if the instrument cannot be used."

The space station was built with four attachment sites that can mount experiments that need direct exposure to space, and one was designated for the AMS. The project was sponsored by the Department of Energy in 1995, and NASA made a signed commitment to deliver the instrument to the station.

Cutbacks, changes

But that was before technical and funding problems slowed assembly of the space station, and the loss of the Columbia shuttle and its crew on Feb. 1, 2003, halted all shuttle missions for 21/2 years. President Bush's 2005 manned exploration initiative, which aims to develop a new spacecraft to travel to the moon and later to Mars, formally lowered the priority of doing basic science on the station. AMS was bumped soon after.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has been firm in saying that the shuttles will be retired in 2010 - in large part because NASA needs the funds to pay for the new spacecraft - and that finishing assembly of the station, at an estimated cost of $100-billion over two decades, is the top priority for the remaining shuttle missions.

The AMS is an automated device with a specific set of scientific tasks. The Columbus lab scheduled to be launched is more like a "shirtsleeves" lab that includes specially designed work areas for a wide range of experiments.

Many of the 16 racks in the 23-foot-long lab have experiments in place - to study the effect of weightlessness on the root systems of plants, the dynamics of fluids in space, how crystals grow without gravity and other questions. Zell said scientists once thought they could perfect and mass-produce metals in space, but that is no longer considered feasible. But the zero-gravity experiments can teach researchers how to make better metals, or crystals, back on Earth, he said.

Missing potential

Columbus will not be the first science lab at the space station; the American Destiny lab was flown to the station in 2001. But scientific experimentation has been limited, in part because the small crew spends most of its time keeping systems running properly, and also because of Bush's moon/Mars initiative.

Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg, a theoretical physicist at the University of Texas, is one of many researchers frustrated by the priorities NASA has set, and he has publicly discussed the AMS issue as a prime example of what he thinks has gone wrong.

"This device could make discoveries that are earth-shattering," he said. "We have an opportunity now to do some worthwhile fundamental science on the ISS, and they're resolutely turning their back on it."

Fast facts

Columbus space lab

Launch: Scheduled Thursday on the space shuttle Atlantis.

Started: 1982.

Original launch: 1992, but delays with launching the space station, the destruction of the shuttle Columbia in 2003, shuttle safety concerns and other problems held up Columbus.

Specs: The European Space Agency's 23-foot-long cylinder will become the eighth room added to the international space station, but only the second laboratory.

Dispute: The European Space Agency wants to get at least 10 years out of Columbus in orbit. NASA plans to pull out of the space station by 2015 to concentrate on lunar exploration.

Times wires

[Last modified December 2, 2007, 01:37:13]