The explosion of the shuttle Challenger nearly two years ago threw the U.S. space program into such staggering disarray that officials have shied away from predicting when the program would get back on track, much less undertake new ventures. Though the shuttle's return to service is still at least six months away, NASA officials last week managed to look beyond that crippling disaster and announced plans for two ambitious programs for the next decade. In 1989, the space agency declared, it will finally launch its long-delayed unmanned Galileo project to Jupiter, a 2.3 billion-mile mission that is expected to last eight...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
