The View from Space: All it takes is time and money

By John Holliman

March 24, 1998
Web posted at: 3:26 PM EST (1526 GMT)

In this story:

• ISS: at what cost?
• Mir still problematic
• A better view from space

ISS: at what cost?

Are you worried about the International Space Station, which is being built in the United States, Russia and more than a dozen other countries? I am.

The station is in trouble on Capitol Hill because of cost overruns. The 1993 estimate of $17 billion for the U.S. contribution is out the window now, having been boosted by NASA to more than $20 billion. NASA blames Russian construction problems, Boeing cost overruns and its own decisions to add things to the station, like the X-38 crew rescue vehicle. The General Accounting Office is studying the latest problems and will report to Sen. John McCain next month.

The new associate administrator for space flight at NASA, Joe Rothenberg, tells CNN the cost overruns are serious, but not so serious that the station itself is in jeopardy. He says he's still hopeful the first elements of the station can be in orbit by the end of this year. The NASA plan presented at the first of this year called for the first three pieces of the station to be orbiting by December, with the first crew of astronauts to be aboard next year. Don't count on it.

Mir still problematic

There are more problems on Russia's Mir space station to talk about. Last week, we talked about the docking problems when a Progress supply vehicle approached Mir on auto-pilot and had to be docked manually. There also are reports of long periods when the Mir cosmonauts can't get through to mission control in Moscow. A European Mir monitor, who uses his radio receiver to listen for calls from the Russian station, reported earlier this month that the Mir cosmonauts have sounded extremely frustrated when they could not get an answer from Moscow.

There's also a growing problem of physical exhaustion. Commander Talgat Musabayev has told ground controllers that he's only had one good night's sleep in weeks and the result is a growing fear that simple mistakes will overtake the crew.

Astronaut Andy Thomas continues to report that he's doing the best job he can of operating the bioreactor on Mir. It's supposed to grow nearly-perfect cancer cells in weightlessness. It's possible to grow these cells on the ground, but on Earth, they bang against the sides of test tubes, making the resulting structures lopsided. The zero-gravity grown structures are much more perfect, giving ground-based experimenters a better idea of what it takes for a cancer cell to grow. There could be a cure for cancer here if the equipment on Mir can be fixed so it doesn't continue to send air bubbles into the growth chamber.

A better view from space

Spy satellite-quality imagery may soon be available to everyone. Despite the government's lid of secrecy, experts who have seen the Pentagon's best stuff say it really could read the license plates on Boris Yeltsin's limousine. In recent years, the commercial satellite industry has tried to get government permission to sell pictures this good to the rest of us. The United States has said no over and over again to protect national security, but now that private companies in other countries are providing clearer pictures from space, the United States is being pressured to allow domestic companies to compete.

The clarity of satellite pictures is expressed in something called "meters of resolution." This translates to how small an object you can pick out from a satellite photograph. Current spy satellites can see things as small as a bicycle. Non-spy satellite pictures can see things as small as a commercial airplane at an airport. The new satellites, once they can be built and launched, will offer one-meter optical imagery, which will let you recognize something 3 feet across.

There's also stuff from satellites that gives you almost 3-D abilities to see things on the ground. Radar satellites can see in the dark, through trees and clouds and down under the ground's surface to spot things invisible to the naked eye.

NASA demonstrated a satellite like this on the shuttle several years ago, and it found underground rivers in the Middle East and long-lost cities beneath the desert. This technology is also being offered to civilian customers by a Canadian company called Radarsat, which is launching a new satellite in 2001 that will have 3-meter resolution in the radar mode. That's going to give us pictures like we've never seen before.

CNN is spending lots of time working to use the new technology of satellite imagery for news gathering. You may remember we showed pictures of the Chernobyl nuclear plant after the accident there, and we've used satellite imagery in our Persian Gulf coverage from time to time as well. In the coming months, expect to see even higher resolution satellite imagery on CNN and here on CNN Interactive. We hope to be able to take you to breaking news events from satellites perhaps even before we can get there with reporters.

John Holliman's "View from Space" appears every Wednesday.

Related stories:

• Top Russian space official criticizes U.S. for space station delays - March 17, 1998
• Mission Mir - New Mir troubles: overworked crew, sweltering heat - March 19, 1998
• The View from Space: If at first you don't succeed - March 17, 1998

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