NASA kills space plane programme

NASA kills space plane programme
REUTERS

WASHINGTON, MARCH 2: NASA has killed the experimental space plane programme that was the centerpiece of its effort to develop a new generation of vehicles for space travel, the Washington Post reported on Friday.NASA had invested five years and $1.3 billion in the X-33, an unpiloted prototype designed to pave the way for a larger vehicle called VentureStar that could carry people and cargo. But the effort fell victim to technical setbacks, cost problems and a collapse in the anticipated launch market, officials told the Post.

“The cost to fly X-33 ... exceeds the benefits that could be derived from flight demonstration of the vehicles,” said Art Stephenson, director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, which manages the launch technology procurement.

“This has been a very tough decision but we are confident it is the right business decision,” Stephenson was quoted as saying.

According to the Post, the X-33 program had been in trouble for some time, and a target of critics who warned it was too ambitious. For these reasons, the Clinton had last year won congressional approval for a new initiative that will spend $4.5 billion over five years to test the most promising new technologies in a long list of key categories.

The X-33 and a smaller suborbital test vehicle called X-34 were eliminated in the just-concluded first round of competition for this new funding, the Post said.Other proposals address higher priority needs and provide “significantly more benefit” than X-33 or X-34, Stephens said. The details of those proposals were not disclosed because they are still a subject of negotiations.

The X-33 project, selected over two competing designs in 1996, was proposed by a team led by Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver.

Near space probe sends final data

WASHINGON: The Near Shoemaker space probe has ended its mission, diligently working until the last minute, NASA’s jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California, has announced. The probe sent its final data from the Eros asteroid back to earth, ending its fruitful five-year mission at 0530 hours IST (0000 gmt) yesterday.

Having granted researchers a 10-day extension for Near’s mission after its successful February 12 landing on Eros, the NASA severed ties between the probe and the Deep Space Network, a complex communication system that relied on radio antennas and telescopes in California, Australia and Spain.