http://www.boston.com/dailynews/235/nation/Citing_the_cost_NASA_is_pullin:.shtml

Citing the cost, NASA is pulling the plug on ozone-studying satellite

By Andrew Bridges, Associated Press, 8/23/2001 16:00

LOS ANGELES (AP) Citing the $10-million-a-year operating costs, NASA is pulling the plug on a satellite that has measured the ozone hole for the past decade.

NASA said the 6½-ton, 35-foot satellite will either be plucked from orbit by the space shuttle or allowed to crash back to Earth sometime between 2016 and 2027.

The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite mission is being cut at a time when NASA faces overruns on a number of projects, including the international space station.

''Scientists are screaming, `How can NASA turn off a satellite?''' NASA spokesman David Steitz said. ''Sorry guys, but it's over. We can't afford to continue to feed it and we have other priorities with new technologies.''

The satellite will cease scientific operations by Sept. 30, or 10 years after it was put in orbit by a space shuttle. Seven of its 10 instruments still work.

The mission was originally designed to last for just three years. A replacement is scheduled to be launched in 2003.

Over the course of its mission, the satellite has measured ozone and chemical compounds found in the ozone layer of the atmosphere. The satellite is best known for its monitoring of the ozone hole over Antarctica.

Scientists on the ozone project are angry over the decision. They have proposed suspending operations and restoring them in a year or so when the satellite could work in tandem with a European satellite now being prepared for launch.

''It's a $1 billion asset we're throwing down the drain because we can't come up with a couple of million to keep it running,'' said Mark Schoeberl, the mission's former project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

On the Net:

http://umpgal.gsfc.nasa.gov/uars-science.html

http://www.aero.org/cords/

-- Anonymous, August 23, 2001