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Triana Mothballed
jessemckinney writes "Apparently, the US congress of last year cut the funding of this great satellite project after it was finished. It will now take millions of dollars (us) to refuel and recalibrate the instruments. Why do politicians have to kill great science projects for their own political vandettas?"
Here's a copy of the article text, for those who do not wish to see pop-up-ad-hell. :)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A science spacecraft dreamed up by Al Gore, built by NASA and delayed by a Republican Congress is now going into mothballs, grounded for lack of a ride into orbit.
The $120 million spacecraft, called Triana, will complete its final ground tests this month, but instead of going to a Florida launch pad, it will be crated and stored indefinitely at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
Officials said that for the next few years there is no room in the space shuttle schedule to launch Triana. NASA is limited by a budget pinch to just six space shuttle flights a year and most of them are being taken up with building the international space station, re-servicing the Hubble Space Telescope and other projects with a higher priority than Triana.
Triana evolved from a 1998 suggestion by then-Vice President Gore that NASA park a camera-toting satellite some 1 million miles out in space so it could constantly beam down a picture of the sunlighted Earth. The picture, updated every 15 minutes and carried on the Internet, was to be similar to the famed "whole Earth" photo taken by Apollo astronauts in 1968.
The spacecraft was to be placed at the Lagrange 1 point, a spot in space where scientists say the gravity of Earth and the gravity of the sun are balanced. The sunnyside of the Earth would be in constant view. Besides capturing the planetary picture suggested by Gore, instruments on Triana would have a unique perspective for studying the Earth's atmosphere, climate and seasonal changes. It would be the first time that such a whole Earth analysis would be possible, scientists said.
Officials named the project after Rodrigo de Triana, the sailor on Columbus' voyage of discovery who first sighted the New World.
"The idea that the vice president had was philosophical. He wanted schoolchildren to look at our planet and appreciate our environment," said Francisco P. J. Valero, the mission's principal scientist. "We realized that there was a lot of science that could be done with such a spacecraft."
Valero, head of an atmospheric research lab at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, and other researchers devised the instruments to be carried on Triana.
But on the way to the launch pad, Triana got ambushed by the Republican-led House of Representatives.
House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, called the spacecraft "a far-out boondoggle." Others ridiculed Triana as the "GoreCam" or "GoreSat." In a partisan vote in May 1999, a House committee cut funds for Triana from NASA's budget.
The money was later restored in a conference committee, but Congress delayed the launch until January 2001, when Gore was to leave the vice presidency, and required that the project first be analyzed by the National Academy of Sciences.
In March 2000, a National Academy committee reported that Triana had "the potential to make unique scientific contributions," even though the mission had "higher than usual risks."
With the Academy endorsement and money from Congress, NASA kicked the project into high gear. The spacecraft, bristling with science instruments and Gore's camera, was built in record time--- but by then it was too late.
Craig Tooley, the deputy project manager, said that when Triana was first proposed, there were enough flights and cargo space for it to fit into the space shuttle schedule.
But now, the shuttle is limited to six flights a year and is heavily loaded with higher priority missions.
After its final ground tests are complete, Triana will be put into an aluminum crate filled with dry nitrogen and stored at Goddard as sort of an air-sealed, space age hanger queen. For how long, nobody knows.
"NASA is committed to flying it and I believe it will get off the ground eventually," said Tooley. He said it is unlikely that Triana could fly before 2004.
In the meantime, NASA will be spending about a million dollars a year to store Triana. The craft's solid rocket propellant, which chemically degrades, expires in 2003 and will have to be replaced, at the cost of about $3 million, before Triana can fly. It would also take $5 to $10 million to recalibrate the instruments after the craft comes out of mothballs. That job alone could take months, said Tooley.
"We've already spent $120 million on Triana," said Valero. "That will all go to waste unless we fly the thing."
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.