35 years on, Nasa seeks return to moon

1.00pm

WASHINGTON - On the 35th anniversary of the first lunar landing, Nasa struggled with money problems as it aimed to return to human space flight after the Columbia disaster and ultimately put people back on the moon.

Even as astronaut Neil Armstrong and his Apollo 11 crew members, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, gathered on Tuesday in Washington for a gala celebration of their July 20, 1969, landing on the lunar surface, Nasa's proposed 2005 budget took a beating on Capitol Hill.

The space agency would get US$229 million($353.5 million) less than it did in 2004 and US$1.1 billion less than President George W Bush requested if a spending bill approved by a US House of Representatives subcommittee becomes law. The panel kept the requested US$4.3 billion for the space shuttle programme and US$691 million for Mars programmes that Bush asked for. Nasa's total budget request for the next fiscal year is US$16.2 billion.

Nasa's human space flight programme has been grounded since shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas on February 1, 2003, killing all seven astronauts aboard. Investigators found a "broken safety culture" at Nasa and recommended upgrades that the space agency has said will cost US$750 million more than first estimated.

Getting the three remaining shuttles flying again is only the beginning of the "vision for space exploration" that Bush unveiled on January 14.

"We will build new ships to carry man forward into the universe, to gain a new foothold on the moon and prepare for new journeys to the worlds beyond our own," Bush said then.

Under Bush's plan, a robotic space probe could go to the moon as early as 2008, but no Americans are expected to travel there before 2020.

The shuttle fleet, required to complete the orbiting International Space Station, would be retired by 2010 and new vehicles would be developed for the moon-Mars missions.

This concentration on human space flight has tightened pressure on science programmes at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

The Hubble Space Telescope needs upgraded observing equipment, new batteries and steadying gyroscopes. But Nasa chief Sean O'Keefe has said shuttle astronauts will not make a repair call to the orbiting observatory because it would be too risky. A space-walking robot might do the job.

Another robotic spacecraft is being "decommissioned," Nasa announced last week. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, a US-Japanese joint project which monitors global change and offers a tool to predict extreme weather, will be allowed to fall out of orbit.

- REUTERS