By Traci Watson, USA TODAY
The space shuttle Discovery, scheduled for liftoff Saturday, will take to orbit a project nearly 25 years and $1 billion in the making: one of the biggest laboratories ever built for the International Space Station.
Excitement over the launch is tempered by concern that the lab's mission may be cut short if NASA follows through on its plan to withdraw from the station after 2015.
Named Kibo, which means "hope" in Japanese, the space lab is designed to last at least 10 years and could probably be used for 20, says Yoshinori Yoshimura of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, which built the lab. NASA's withdrawal from the space station could lead the lab to prematurely shut down.
Besides Japan and the United States, 12 other nations have invested in the station. NASA has been responsible for 75% of the $157 billion cost of building and operating the 10-year-old station, according to the European Space Agency. It "does not seem feasible" that other nations could fill NASA's shoes, says Cristina Chaplain of the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress.
Withdrawing from the station for lack of money a few years after finishing it is "like buying a new car and saying, 'You paid $40,000 for a new car, and now I can't put the gas in the tank,' " said former senator John Glenn, the first American in orbit, during a Capitol Hill visit this month.
The space agency has made no final decisions.
NASA's space-operations chief William Gerstenmaier said last month that NASA has "done nothing to preclude" U.S. participation in the station beyond 2015. He said if NASA does want to continue research on the station, "we need to do that planning now."
NASA wants to end its commitment to the space station, so it can use the money — about $2 billion a year — to return humans to the moon.
If NASA were to pull out of the station in 2015 without getting its partners' approval, "there would be a lot of problems," says Alan Thirkettle, station manager for the European Space Agency.
He notes the United States signed a 1998 treaty establishing the station that requires Europe to get 10 years of use from the station's lab. A 2015 shutdown would allow Europe seven years of research.
Kibo's biggest section, including the main laboratory, will be fixed in place by the seven-member crew on Discovery — the second of three shuttle flights needed to transport and assemble the lab. The shuttle's launch is scheduled for 5:02 p.m. ET Saturday.
Astronauts in Kibo will be able to use equipment such as a furnace for growing crystals and a chamber for growing cells. Rather than addressing industrial or medical questions, experiments will focus on basic research — including how fluids behave in zero gravity.
The space station was repeatedly redesigned in the 1980s and '90s, driving up the lab's cost and delaying its flight. The lab won't be done until 2009, when a platform for astronomy equipment is launched.
Discovery commander Mark Kelly, who called the lab "pretty amazing," said it "would be great if we could continue to operate it" beyond 2015.
It's "ridiculous to be thinking about decommissioning the station before it's even completed," says space researcher Louis Stodieck of the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Others point out that NASA has cut funding for research on the station. "What are we losing?" says David Goldston, former chief of staff of the House Science Committee. "In terms of actual science … it's going to do virtually nothing."
NASA pullout could cut 'hope' short
