Astronomers and a U.S. senator renewed calls on Wednesday for a repair mission to NASA's aging Hubble Space Telescope, even though the Bush administration's proposed budget would see it die in orbit.
Sen. Barbara Mikulski, a Maryland Democrat whose state is home to the Space Telescope Science Institute and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, told the space agency that a failure to keep working toward a mission to fix Hubble could be against the law.
In a letter to Frederick Gregory, NASA's acting administrator, Mikulski noted that Congress appropriated $291 million for fiscal 2005 for a Hubble servicing mission.
"I expect NASA to carry out Congress' intent and spend the entire amount appropriated this year so there will be no interruption in the planning, preparation and engineering work that will be necessary for a servicing mission to Hubble," she wrote.
The Bush administration's proposed 2006 budget requested only $93 million for the Hubble program, with $75 million of that set aside to bring the orbiting observatory safely to Earth.
The Hubble is overdue for repairs and upgrading, and in the past has been fixed by shuttle astronauts. But the shuttle fleet has been grounded since the Columbia disaster on Feb. 1, 2003 and former NASA chief Sean O'Keefe said repeatedly he would not risk lives to fix the telescope.
A professional organization of U.S. astronomers added its voice on Wednesday to those taking issue with NASA's decision.
"The Hubble Space Telescope has been the crown jewel in NASA's science programs for over a decade," the American Astronomical Society said in a statement.
The fact that the repair mission had already been planned and new scientific instruments developed for Hubble "makes this decision particularly unfortunate and difficult to accept," the group said.
The big winners in NASA's proposed budget are the shuttle program — slated to return to flight in May — along with the International Space Station and a plan to develop a vehicle to replace the shuttle.
This is in line with President George W. Bush's plan to return Americans to the moon and eventually send them to Mars.