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

DATE: TUESDAY, December 7, 1993                   TAG: 9312070182
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C4   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: Newport News Daily Press
DATELINE: HAMPTON                                LENGTH: Medium

NASA OFFICIAL SAYS RESEARCH IS IN THE STARS

As NASA reels from a series of highly publicized failures in its space program, NASA Langley and other research centers that focus on aeronautics will play an increasingly vital role in the agency's future, its chief scientist said Monday.

In an interview at NASA Langley Research Center following her first speech as chief scientist, France Anne Cordova said she believes aeronautics research deserves more attention and more funding. She said top NASA officials share that belief.

"I think that's a good sign for Langley and Ames," she said, referring to the local facility and Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif. Most research at the two centers is related to airplane travel. Researchers there design everything from airplane wings and nose cones to tire treads and sophisticated on-board weather radar.

Cordova, who began her job in October and toured Langley for the first time Monday, spoke to about 150 people, mostly about space research and exploration. She said her long-range vision for NASA is to put "lots of footprints on the moons of our solar system."

She said the National Aeronautics and Space Administration should continue to take risks, despite recent failures. This year alone, NASA lost the $980 million Mars Observer and a $67 million weather satellite, failed to free the stuck antenna on the Galileo probe to Jupiter and missed its deadlines on 13 space-shuttle launches.

Cordova's focus on space prompted one person in the audience to ask what she will do to sell NASA's aeronautics mission to the general public.

Cordova said Langley workers should "take some leadership," formulate ideas to promote their work and relay those suggestions to her. That response elicited grumbling from some who feel that aeronautics deserves more visible support in the highest levels of the agency.

The 46-year-old chief scientist is a self-described NASA outsider who until recently headed the Pennsylvania State University astronomy and astrophysics department.

She said she has been a NASA fan since she was a child and first saw images of orbiting satellites. She grew up wanting to be many things, ranging from journalist to novelist to physicist.

After earning an English degree from Stanford University, Cordova worked for the Los Angeles Times. She also was a guest editor for Mademoiselle. She left journalism to pursue astrophysics, she said, because of two things she saw: man landing on the moon, and a television program on cosmology, the study of the universe.

Cordova studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology, then worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico before going to Penn State, where she plans to return one day.

Cordova said this is "a significant moment in time" for NASA as shuttle astronauts attempt to fix the $1.5 billion Hubble Space Telescope, which is nearsighted because of a manufacturing flaw in its main mirror. Space scientists hope the telescope will provide the best view ever of the universe; space technologists hope a successful mission will quell doubt about whether complex jobs can be done in space.

If the telescope can't be fixed, space analysts say, it will be yet another blow to NASA's reputation and make it more difficult to get money for space research.

One of Cordova's jobs as chief scientist is to work with Congress, and she realizes the importance of the repair mission.

"But all of what NASA does, whether it's space or aeronautics, should have some element of risk in it," she said. "We're entrusted with taking risks. I don't believe we should shift our priorities away from risk altogether."

by CNB