It was NASA鈥檚 , but despite the celebrations the agency has been beset by bad news and questions over its future.
In 2010 its ageing space shuttle fleet is set to retire for safety reasons. The problem is, the Ares I rocket and Orion crew capsule intended to replace it won鈥檛 be ready until at least 2015, forcing NASA to seek an interim deal with Russia to carry US astronauts to the International Space Station aboard its Soyuz spacecraft. However, that was put in jeopardy in August when Russia鈥檚 conflict with Georgia made for frosty relations between the US and Russia. At least the legislation needed to extend NASA鈥檚 contract with Russia got through the US Senate. To make matters worse, there were mounting concerns about Ares I, not least its tendency to vibrate violently during launch, and worries that it might not have enough power to lift the hefty Orion capsule, putting the future of the entire project in doubt.
In September, an electronics failure on the venerable Hubble Space Telescope temporarily halted most of its observations. An on-board back-up system had Hubble working again by October, but to be safe, NASA wants to replace the whole unit. This meant delaying Hubble鈥檚 long-awaited shuttle servicing mission until May 2009 so the replacement could be tested on the ground. More bad news followed, though, when initial tests turned up glitches in the replacement unit, calling into question whether it could be used at all.
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Then, in November, former NASA science chief Alan Stern for the spiralling costs of projects like Hubble鈥檚 successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, and a giant rover called the Mars Science Laboratory. Cost overruns of several billion dollars are hobbling NASA from developing other worthy missions, he said. Just days later the agency announced technical problems would delay the MSL from 2009 to 2011, and cost $400 million more.
The agency did enjoy some successes in 2008, including landing the Phoenix probe on Mars, images of unseen parts of Mercury taken by the Messenger spacecraft, and progress in completing the ISS. But given the challenges, NASA鈥檚 goal of returning humans to the moon by 2020 seems a very long way off.
