March 19, 2003 | KU Radio News Line

Audio


Contact: Tom Armstrong, Physics and Astronomy, (785) 840-0800; Frank Barthell, University Relations, (785) 864-8869.

Radio News Line text:
KU researcher says space exploration should continue

UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY TOM ARMSTRONG HOPES TO SEE A SHUTTLE LAUNCH BY THE END OF THIS YEAR. THOUGH HIS EXPERIMENTS USE UNMANNED PLANETARY ORBITERS, ARMSTRONG SAYS THERE'S A NEED FOR BOTH HUMANS AND ROBOTS IN SPACE.

ARMSTRONG DOESN'T BELIEVE THERE WILL EVER BE ONE CLEAR-CUT ANSWER FOR THE CAUSE OF THE COLUMBIA EXPLOSION.
ARMSTRONG: "I rather would expect that what they'll do is come to several possibilities and make sure that they take care of any or all of these possibilities and go on. After all, the objective here is safe flight." (13 sec.)

ARMSTRONG SAYS LAST MONTH'S EXPLOSION IS A SETBACK FOR EXPERIMENTS REQUIRING HUMANS, PARTICULARLY FOR RESEARCH IN WHAT ARE CALLED THE "INDOOR SPORTS."
ARMSTRONG: "The indoor sports are the physiology of humans, biology, the materials processing. The reason it's bad news is that it crowds the schedule, it crowds the man power, it crowds the resources. It's far from obvious that will ever be done again." (15 sec.)

ARMSTRONG SAYS THE SHUTTLE FLEET IS GETTING OLD. TWO OF THE REMAINING THREE VEHICLES, THE DISCOVERY AND ATLANTIS, WERE FIRST LAUNCHED IN THE MID-1980S. HE SAYS THE AGE OF THE FLEET POSES A THREAT TO HUMAN RESEARCH.
ARMSTRONG: "So now we have an aging set of vehicles. While we maintain them intensely, they've got a few good flights left in them. Then what? We can't build anymore. We don't have the factory left and the tooling I don't believe has been preserved. I doubt we'd build them the same way." (19 sec.)

ARMSTRONG SAYS IT IS CRITICAL FOR HUMANS TO CONTINUE LEADING MISSIONS IN SPACE, THOUGH IT'S EXPENSIVE AND RISKY.
ARMSTRONG: "I think there is a point to human presence in space. For those few folks who are privileged to do so, it's their responsibility to explain it to the world and to share their inspiration and their courage. The human race has never turned its back on a frontier that was capable of exploration, and it won't happen this time." (20 sec.)

THIS SEPTEMBER, THE GALILEO ORBITER WILL CRASH INTO THE PLANET JUPITER WITH ONE OF ARMSTRONG'S EXPERIMENTS ABOARD. HE BUILT AND INSTALLED A RADIATION SENSOR TO MEASURE RADIATION FROM THE PLANET. ARMSTRONG SAYS THE 700-POUND SPACECRAFT HAS NEARLY DEPLETED ITS SUPPLY OF PROPELLANT NEEDED TO CONTROL ITS FLIGHT PATH.

THOUGH NOT AS HIGH-PROFILE AS SHUTTLE FLIGHTS, THE CONTINUED STUDY OF THE PLANETS IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM IS CRITICAL, ARMSTRONG SAYS.
ARMSTRONG: "It is part of nature that informs how we understand the sun, how we understand the earth, the nature of the electrical forces in our own environment. When we roll back the frontiers beyond the easy things to observe and start looking more deeply into how nature's operating, there are lots and lots of important surprises." (23 sec.)

ARMSTRONG SPENT TWO YEARS AT NASA. HE CONTINUES TO GATHER DATA FROM VOYAGER 1 AND 2, AND FROM THE EMP 8 ORBITER LAUNCHED IN 1973.

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