Science Committee Hearing on Hubble Space Telescope Repair Mission

Indicative of the great interest there is in the early December shuttle flight to repair the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was a November 16 hearing of the House Subcommittee on Space. As one of NASA’s planned great observatories, HST is seen, in the words of subcommittee chairman Ralph M. Hall (D-Texas), as “a project that became a symbol of a troubled space program.” It is clear from the hearing that the upcoming mission has the potential to renew congressional optimism about NASA, with the reverse being equally true.

On October 4, NASA agreed to a $25 million settlement with The Perkin-Elmer Corporation and Hughes Danbury Optical Systems, Inc. “by reason of the defect in the primary mirror.” An additional $6.5 million in future HST-related contracts will be performed by Hughes Danbury at no cost through the end of 1999. The agreement specifies that it is not to be construed as an admission of any liability on the part of Perkin-Elmer and Hughes Danbury. NASA’s General Counsel testified that “actual, monetary damages ...from the defect in the mirror” was $87 million, which he felt could not be recovered because of “certain legal defenses.” Hall and Ranking Republican James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin) were generally supportive of the agreement, although Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-California) criticized the lack of any personnel action being taken against responsible individuals.

First to testify was Lieutenant General Thomas P. Stafford, Chairman of the Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Mission Review Team. His team of nine other individuals first met in September 1992. Their primary charge was to review NASA’s plans for conducting the servicing of the telescope. They made a series of recommendations, the chief among them being one calling for the appointment of a mission director with overall responsibility for the mission. Other technical recommendations including the testing of tolerances, training, and that “as much testing and verification as possible should be planned for the Hubble Space Telescope while the Shuttle is still on-orbit.” Additional recommendations concerned management and review procedures, and the provision of some backup crew members for the mission.

Also testifying was Bill Colvin, NASA’s Inspector General. Colvin explained, with the aid of large visual displays, “six significant irregular events which occurred during the manufacture of the mirror.” His team’s investigation revealed, in his words, that “obvious evidence of errors existed at all stages of the manufacturing process of the primary mirror. Yet it appears no serious attempt was made to resolve the source of these errors.” Colvin testified that one Perkin-Elmer engineer was “haunted” by the interferometric pattern of the refractive null corrector test of the primary HST mirror. Colvin continued, “to our best determination, Perkin-Elmer did not share the discrepant results of the vertex radius test with NASA.” These findings formed the basis of the civil complaint filed by the Department of Justice against Perkin-Elmer, which led to the October settlement agreement.

In the conclusion of his testimony, Stafford sounded a note of caution about the future of the Hubble Space Telescope and its repair mission: “Throughout our review the Team was very concerned about relaying overly optimistic expectations to the public.... Every press release should convey the ambitious and difficult nature of this mission and the new challenges involved. NASA again faces a challenge in conveying to the public that even if all of this mission’s objectives cannot be accomplished, meaningful science will still be achieved at factors far greater than available on Earth.”

The twelve-day mission to repair the telescope is scheduled to lift-off at 3:00 am on December 1.

UPDATE ON THE PENNY-KASICH BUDGET LEGISLATION: Last night, the House rejected by a vote of 219-213 this amendment which contained provisions establishing a Department of Science, reduced fusion energy funding, and capped university research overhead costs (see FYI #153.)