Clinton, Lawmakers Reaffirm Support for NASA Programs

President Clinton defended the U.S. space program Wednesday in the wake of the Mars Polar Lander mishap, and key lawmakers said Congress is unlikely to cut space funding, despite growing criticism about the loss of the $165-million craft.

Asked about the loss of contact with the Polar Lander since it reached the Martian atmosphere last week, Clinton told a news conference that the foul-up was “nothing compared to” the 1967 tragedy in which three astronauts lost their lives in a fire during a ground test of the Apollo I spacecraft.

“America didn’t quit” then in its quest to land men on the moon, “and I don’t think we should quit now,” he said.

Continuing the space program, he said, is “important not only for the American tradition of exploration but it’s important if we . . . ever hope to know what’s beyond our galaxy.”

Meanwhile, two key lawmakers said that Congress is unlikely to cut funding for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Science Committee, said lawmakers will also be loath to jettison the agency’s current space-on-a-shoestring mandate for its exploration program, known as the “faster, better, cheaper” approach.

Scrapping it would mean “that we would end up doing nothing, because there simply is not enough money in the budget to go back to the . . . old days” of flush budgets for the space agency, Sensenbrenner told reporters.

Rep. James T. Walsh (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that handles the NASA budget, expressed similar views. “We’ll kind of follow their lead,” he said, referring to Sensenbrenner’s Science Committee.

Both House members warned that Congress will be pressing NASA administrator Daniel S. Goldin to begin overhauling the agency as soon as a panel Goldin plans to convene reports on what may have caused the latest Polar Lander failure. The spacecraft’s two auxiliary Deep Space 2 probes, which cost $29.2 million, also were lost.

Goldin has vowed to revamp the agency’s interplanetary exploration program--and possibly postpone or cancel some future missions--until the panel has determined what went wrong with the most recent mission and what is needed to avoid further problems.

The agency lost a similar spacecraft in September, when a navigation error threw the $125-million Mars Climate Orbiter off course. In that case, a review blamed poor communication among scientists, which led to a mismatch in component measuring systems.

Both failed spacecraft were part of programs managed by the Pasadena-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory and by Lockheed Martin Astronautics, with participation by other contractors and subcontractors.

In his defense of the space agency, Clinton recalled that Americans often use the expression: “This isn’t rocket science.” But, he admonished, the Mars Polar Lander program “is rocket science.”

“We’re trying to take a spaceship the size of a boulder and throw it 450 [million] miles . . . and hit a target--and it isn’t easy,” Clinton said. He said Americans have reaped technological benefits from the space program, and “we’ll get more in the future.”

Sensenbrenner said Congress is likely to conduct hearings early next year, as soon as the review panel that Goldin plans to appoint finishes its work.

Congress itself has been a target for recriminations about the space program, both for prodding Goldin to cut spending and for adopting the “faster, better, cheaper” approach.

A House Appropriations subcommittee tried this year to slash $1 billion from NASA funding, but the agency headed it off by rallying employees, contractors and lawmakers from affected districts to protest.