DON’T HOBBLE THE HUBBLE

President Bush’s spectacular vision of sending an American to Mars via the moon has forced a tough decision: Mars vs. the Hubble telescope. To prepare for an attempted Mars landing many years from now means pulling the plug on the eye in the sky that has already proved its usefulness and promises much more in future years.

The Mars project, of course, is far more exciting. Who can forget John F. Kennedy’s pledge to send a man to the moon, John Glenn’s first venture into orbit, or Neil Armstrong’s first landing on the moon?

But the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has developed robotic technology that can do everything that manned flight can do – and do it far better and far cheaper – with the Hubble Space Telescope as one of its stars. Just this month, the Hubble detected oxygen and carbon in the atmosphere of a planet 150 light-years away. That’s 9 quadrillion miles. A few days later scientists announced that Hubble had spotted a “Black Eye” galaxy, so named because an ancient cosmic collision produced a dark ring and a turbulent area where new stars were being formed. That one is 17 light-years from the earth. For comparison, Mars, at its closest, is only 34 million miles from here.

The issue came to a head when Mr. Bush announced his plan for a manned moon-Mars mission and NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe followed up by condemning Hubble to a slow death by deciding to abandon further servicing of the space telescope. It needs its batteries recharged and three of its six gyroscopes repaired. Mr. O’Keefe recalled the Columbia space shuttle disaster and said it would be too dangerous to go forward with a scheduled Hubble repair mission. He plans to send an unmanned space ship to pull the bus-sized telescope out of orbit and dump it into the ocean. Under congressional pressure, he has asked retired Adm. Harold Gehman, who headed the board investigating the Columbia shuttle disaster, to appraise the decision. But NASA says the case is already closed.

A local astronomer, Neil Comins, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Maine, describes the decision as putting politics ahead of science and considers the manned Mars project simply a campaign gimmick, a Bush effort to wrap himself in the Kennedy legacy. He calls the Hubble “absolutely invaluable” in changing our understanding of the universe. He calls the manned Mars project technically uncertain – “We don’t know how to land humans on Mars and get them back” – and far too costly.

As for the safety angle, he says the risks of another service flight to the Hubble are miniscule compared to the hazards of manned interplanetary travel. He calls the current pride tab of $1.5 trillion underestimated and notes that it equals a full year’s present federal budget. “With one-tenth of that amount, we could send 50 Explorers throughout the solar system and accomplish so much more,” he says.

The Bush administration would do well to listen to the Earth-based astronomers like Professor Comins, abandon election-year dreams of going to Mars and keep the Hubble operating, continuing its record of success.