End Mir Mission, Says House Panel Nasa Asked Not To Send Wolf To Troubled Space Station

Members of the House Science Committee urged NASA on Thursday to cancel its plan to put another American astronaut on the Russian spaceship Mir.

Astronaut David Wolf is scheduled to be launched on space shuttle Atlantis next week to the Mir. He is to become the sixth astronaut to live on Mir, replacing Michael Foale, who has been on the Russian space station since May.

The congressmen wanted to know whether astronauts are in danger on the aging spaceship.

“Is the Mir safe?” Spokane Republican George Nethercutt and other members of the panel repeatedly asked a string of witnesses.

Capt. Frank Culbertson, who oversees NASA’s Shuttle-Mir program, answered - again and again - yes.

He added, though, that human space exploration is “inherently risky.’

Other witnesses were less reassuring. James Oberg, a space engineer and independent consultant, said no more American astronauts should be sent to the Mir until safety issues are reviewed.

“We have to decide whether the added value of having two more astronauts on the Mir is worth the risk,” he said.

In an interview, Nethercutt said he doubts the committee will take any action before the end of September when the next American astronaut is scheduled to head for Mir.

But the hearings should alert the space agency that “we expect NASA to have high standards,” Nethercutt said.

The Mir’s problems have been the stuff of headlines since early this year. A fire broke out in February. An unmanned cargo ship crashed into the space station during a docking procedure in June. The Mir astronauts have since faced other troubles: computers that don’t work; interrupted communications and a buildup of carbon-dioxide in the spacecraft.

On Monday night, the Mir narrowly missed colliding with a U.S. military satellite.

Nethercutt said he is most concerned about the fire, because Russian scientists have not found the cause. The investigation has not issued a final report but ruled the most likely cause was an oxygen canister.

Finding only a “probable cause” didn’t satisfy many members.

Culbertson said it is not unusual that the direct cause of the fire has been elusive.

“Look at TWA Flight 800, we still don’t know what happened,” the NASA official said.

Roberta Gross, NASA’s inspector general, said a preliminary assessment of the Mir-Shuttle program shows the space agency could do more to open up the lines of communication within its own ranks. Astronauts are reluctant to speak freely, she charged, because they do not want to jeopardize their chances to go into space.

The number of mishaps of varying severity on the 11-year-old Mir has jumped to roughly 60, up from about 20 in 1995, according to figures presented to the committee.

Culbertson said, however, those numbers are misleading because the Russians do not have ready access to historical data. The number of problems on the Mir has held fairly constant in recent years, he said.

Throughout the hearings, the questions never veered far from safety. Members worried that Russian standards are lower than NASA’s.

One concern, raised by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., was that the Russian space program may be strapped for cash and may be prone to cutting corners.

“It’s not that Russians don’t have the will, but they don’t have the money,” he said.

As problems become more common, the members of Congress worried that astronauts will spend more of their time keeping the creaky spacecraft together, rather than conducting experiments.

Marcia Smith of the Congressional Research Office told the panel: “The Mir has become an experiment itself.”

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Laurie Snyder Staff writer Associated Press contributed to this report.