
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 11, 1990                   TAG: 9007110174
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

OTHER HUBBLE BIDDER WOULD HAVE TESTED MIRRORS, NASA SAYS

An unsuccessful bidder for the manufacture of Hubble Space Telescope mirrors proposed a test that might have detected any focusing flaw, but NASA chose a company that did not include testing in its proposal, a NASA official said Tuesday.

James R. Thompson Jr., deputy administrator of NASA, told a Senate hearing that Eastman Kodak Co. had included "final assembly testing" of the telescope's optics system when it bid on the project in 1977.

NASA officials gave the optical systems contract to Perkin-Elmer Corp., now called Hughes Danbury Optical Systems Inc., which did not offer the testing. The space agency never ordered the tests on the grounds they were too expensive.

Thompson did not say why Perkin-Elmer was selected for the contract, which was worth $451 million with cost overruns, but NASA spokesman Bill Sheehan said later that "in any process strength and weaknesses of bidders are evaluated; Perkin-Elmer had on balance more strength." Other sources said that the firm's experience with spy satellites weighed in its favor.

A procurement officer at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center said in a telephone interview that information about the competitive bids could not be released without a formal request in writing.

Sen. Albert Gore, D-Tenn., chairman of the Senate Commerce space subcommittee, told Thompson that "inadequate testing" was "the common denominator" in the telescope problem - and the current grounding of two space shuttles due to hydrogen leaks.

Defending NASA's performance at the hearing on the agency's future, Thompson also acknowledged that the United States is likely to lose another shuttle in an accident in the next decade.

But he insisted the chances of a repeat of the 1986 Challenger disaster that killed seven astronauts are "very low with the team we've got in place now."

Meanwhile, Hubble Space Telescope experts told a news conference that they have moved closer to determining which of two mirrors had been cut to the wrong prescription.

by CNB