01/17/2004: 
Breaking News
Hubble's doom in the stars: NASA to retire its telescope
By Patty Reinert, Huston Chronicle
WASHINGTON -- Two days after President Bush redirected NASA toward the moon and Mars, the space agency on Friday announced the first casualty: the Hubble Space Telescope.
"This is a sad day," said John Grunsfeld, NASA's chief scientist and a four-time shuttle astronaut. The decision shook the astronomy world.
Grunsfeld said NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe made the decision and broke the news to workers at Goddard Spaceflight Center in Maryland on Friday morning, saying a planned space shuttle mission to service the telescope would be canceled.
The bus-size telescope, which has been sending home spectacular images of the universe for over a decade and forced the rewriting of astronomy textbooks, will continue its mission until it wears out -- likely by 2007 or 2008, Grunsfeld said.
It does not seem right. After all the work and money that it took to get it running, and the incredible data that it has collected, that they should abandon it as part of the smokescreen Bush is throwing up in order to get re-elected.
3 Annotations Submitted
Monday the 19th of January, rafuzo noted:
It's because Halliburton is trying to break into the space-research-instrument industry and gave the order to squelch all competition. Right now they are using oil money to design the ion engines that will power the Mars mission the Bush junta is secretly organizing for 2008.
Monday the 19th of January, Dick Cheney noted:
Sounds about right.
Tuesday the 20th of January, Deepthroat noted:
