¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

IT WAS meant to be the year of lunar colonies and crewed missions to
Jupiter’s moons. But 2001 fell dismally short of the expectations of Arthur C.
Clarke.

When the ageing Russian space station Mir made its final fiery plunge back to
Earth in March, the American managers of the International Space Station
breathed a collective sigh of relief. While NASA is providing most of the funds
for the ISS, the project is years behind schedule partly because of delays to a
crucial Russian module. Mir’s demise meant that the Russians could concentrate
on its $30 billion successor.

And there were other successes to celebrate. In February, the NEAR Shoemaker
spacecraft landed on the asteroid Eros after sending back numerous images of its
rocky surface. In October, the Mars Odyssey spacecraft entered orbit around
Mars—a vital triumph as NASA’s previous three Mars missions had all
crashed into the Red Planet. And in November, the Genesis spacecraft reached its
destination over 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, where it is collecting
particles from the solar wind to bring back home.

But in June, NASA’s fortunes took a sudden turn for the worse. Dan Goldin,
the agency’s chief, revealed that the ISS was $5 billion over budget. The
Bush administration immediately halted the development of a habitation module
and a space lifeboat that would have been needed for the station to operate with
a full crew of seven.

Without them, the ISS will only be able to support a skeleton crew of three
who will spend most of their time carrying out maintenance. Critics point out
that the original purpose of the station was to carry out experiments in space
and that the scaled-down version is hardly worth operating.

Things got even worse in October when a devastating report into the financial
woes of the ISS placed the blame firmly on NASA’s managers. Perhaps with advance
warning of the report’s contents, Goldin resigned along with a number of his top
managers.

As a replacement, President Bush settled on Sean O’Keefe, formerly the second
in command of the White House body that oversees NASA’s budget and a vocal
critic of NASA’s handling of the station. A number of senior space industry
figures had apparently turned down the job. O’Keefe now has the unenviable task
of restoring credibility in a space station severely handicapped by budget
restrictions, and revitalising an agency demoralised by years of budget
cutbacks.

Things aren’t going much better elsewhere. NASDA, one of Japan’s two space
agencies, did manage to successfully launch its H-2A rocket after two failed
attempts. Yet in the face of dramatic budget cuts, NASDA is almost certain to be
merged with its rival ISAS.

The European Space Agency, already a victim of cuts in previous years, also
had a disappointing time. In July, its Ariane 5 rocket launcher malfunctioned,
placing a satellite in the wrong orbit. The failure was another setback for the
agency’s attempts to establish the reliability of the rocket, which blew up
spectacularly on its first flight in 1996.

Only China had a good year, pressing ahead with its programme to put a
Chinese astronaut into space by 2005. In January, it sent a space capsule
containing a number of animals into orbit. Another mission is planned this
month.

The year ended with Russian space officials, usually the butt of American
criticism, cheerfully rubbing salt into NASA’s wounds. How would the US be able
to maintain its commitments to the station, they wondered with more than a hint
of sarcasm. It is a question that remains unanswered.