Astronauts onboard the shuttle Discovery had completed two of the four spacewalks to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope by Saturday morning.
     Friday night, astronauts Gregory Harbaugh and Joe Tanner replaced a Fine Guidance Sensor on the Hubble and also replaced a faulty tape recorder with a new unit.
     Astronauts Mark Lee and Steve Smith successfully completed the first and most critical of the four spacewalks scheduled late Thursday night when they took out two old instruments from Hubble and replaced them with two new ones.
     Lee and Smith removed the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph (GHRS) and replaced it with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph. They then removed the Faint Object Spectrograph (FOS) and replaced it with the Near-Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS).
     The replacement came just in time for one of the instruments. Last week a malfunction crippled the GHRS, filling its interior with smoke. Telescope controllers shut down the instrument to prevent any possible contamination of other instruments in Hubble.
     "The mission is just in time," says NASA's Ken Ledbetter
     The start of Thursday night's spacewalk was delayed by about two hours when one of Hubble's solar panels started turning wildly just as Lee and Smith were opening the outer door of the airlock. The solar panel was swiftly brought under control and moved back to its original position.
     Engineers decided that air, rushing out from the airlock and striking the panel, was likely cause for the sudden panel swing. Lee and Smith then opened the airlock more slowly to prevent the problem from reappearing.
     Discovery launched on schedule at 3:55am EST Tuesday, February 11. In the days before launch there had been concerns about an oxygen leak in the shuttle orbiter and a fuel cell that might produce alkaline water, but both were resolved before launch.
     Two days after launch the shuttle reached Hubble and pulled the telescope into the cargo bay. At the controls of the robot arm was astronomer-astronaut Steve Hawley, who used the arm on mission STS-31 in 1990 to originally deploy the telescope.
     "You should see the expression on Dr. Steve's face," said shuttle commander Ken Bowersox. "He looks like he just shook hands with an old friend."
     Two more spacewalks are scheduled. On Saturday night, Lee and Smith will replace a data tape recorder with a higher-capacity solid state recorder, replace a faulty data interface unit, and replace a reaction wheel assembly, part of the system that control's Hubble orientation.
     Sunday night, Harbaugh and Tanner will wrap up the spacewalks by replacing the solar array drive electronics and mount new covers over magnetometers on the telescope.
     If the remaining spacewalks go as expected, Hubble will be released back into its own orbit early Tuesday morning, February 18. The shuttle is scheduled to land at the Kennedy Space Center on February 21.

NASA officials pronounced President Clinton's 1998 budget proposal for NASA as "stable" even though the agency's budget was cut by more than $200 million from 1997.
     "The President put into place stable funding for the next five years," NASA Administrator Dan Goldin said at a press conference February 6. "This stable funding shows the commitment this Administration has to science and technology."
     Under the President's proposal, NASA would receive $13.5 billion in fiscal year 1998, down from $13.7 billion in 1997 and $13.9 billion in 1996.
     Although the agency's budget was cut by $200 million, few programs were shortchanged in the budget. $100 million in savings came from payments to the Russian Space Agency made in 1997 that were not repeated in 1998, while cost savings in the shuttle program accounted for more than $100 million.
     The cost savings allows NASA to increase -- slightly -- the budget for space science and technology programs. The space science budget increased by $75 million in the 1998 proposal to just over $2 billion.
     The space science budget includes the first $81 million in funding for the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), the last of the four "Great Observatories" in orbit and a target of budget cuts in recent years.
     More space science funding was also allocated to small spacecraft programs, including the Discovery and New Millennium projects. The Mars Surveyor program also received addition funding to speed its efforts to launch a sample return mission by 2005.
     Much of the increased space science research is tied to NASA's "Origins" program to understand the creation of the universe, the solar system, and life on Earth and possibly other worlds.
     Aeronautics and space transportation technology got a $130 million boost in the 1998 budget proposal. This includes a $70 million increase in funds for reusable launch vehicle research. Aeronautics research absorbed the rest of the additional money.
     Space station funding remained constant at $2.1 billion in fiscal year 1998, but with a funding shift beginning from the development of the station to operation of the station during construction.
     Projections for NASA's budget in future years showed funding slipping to $13.4 billion in 1999 and $13.2 billion in 2000, then holding steady through 2002. Under the same budget plan, the federal budget deficit is slated to disappear by the year 2002.
     Not everyone was happy with the budget. The National Space Society released a statement that criticized the Clinton administrator for cutting NASA's budget despite the strong recent performance of the agency.
     Noting that in 1998 dollars the proposed budget amounts to a $500 million cut from the 1997 budget, NSS Executive Director David Brandt said, "For doing their job, NASA's proposed budget for 1998 is being slashed by another $500 million. NASA and Administrator Goldin are obligated to be 'pleased' with the President's proposal, but we're not."
     "More than ever, it's crucial for the U.S. to invest in science and engineering," Brandt added. "That means supporting NASA, which generates advanced technologies for the future."
     The budget is now subject to Congressional scrutiny, and is likely subject to at least minor changes before it is approved by Congress.
     "We know NASA will continue to create missions that shape the future," Goldin said, "and discoveries that rewrite the history books."

A three-man team of Russian and German cosmonauts lifted off from Kazakhstan on Monday, February 10 and docked with the Russian space station Mir two days later.
     The Soyuz-U rocket launched the TM-25 spacecraft into orbit at 9:09am EST (1409 UT) February 10. The spacecraft successfully reached orbit and docked with Mir two days later, just before 11am EST (1600 UT) February 12.
     The Soyuz spacecraft carried two Russians and one German to Mir. Russians Vasily Tsibliyev and Alexander Lazutkin will spend the next four months on Mir, relieving fellow Russians Valery Korzun and Alexander Kaleri.
     German guest cosmonaut Reinhard Ewald will spend nearly three weeks on Mir performing experiments for the "Euromir '97" mission. He will return to Earth with Korzun and Kaleri in early March.
     The Soyuz launch had been scheduled for December, but was delayed due to production problems at the facility that assembles the Soyuz boosters. The problems are directly related to the poor financial condition of the Russian space program.
     American astronaut Jerry Linenger, who has been on Mir for the past month, will remain on the station until the next shuttle docking mission, scheduled for May.