Senate Resolution Introduced To Save Hubble Mission

摘要

The campaign to save the Hubble Space Telescope moved to the floor of the U.S. Senate as NASA began sorting through the more than two dozen formal responses to its call for ideas on servicing the popular observatory without a space shuttle crew. In an election year marked by increasingly shrill partisan rhetoric, two senators put aside their political differences March 24 to co-sponsor a resolution calling on NASA to continue preparations for a final service call to Hubble while an outside panel reviews NASA's decision to cancel the mission. The resolution (S. Res. 324) was introduced by longtime Hubble champion Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) and the Republican chairman of a Senate subcommittee with NASA oversight responsibility, Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas. It asks the Senate to recognize Hubble's "extraordinary contributions" to science and education and urges NASA to appoint an independent panel of experts to "examine all possible options for safely carrying out the planned servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope and assess alternative servicing methods." A similar resolution was introduced in the House of Representatives March 3 by Rep. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), whose congressional district includes Boulder-based Ball Aerospace & Technology, builder of several Hubble instruments. That resolution has attracted 42 co-sponsors.