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Pat Duggins
Pat Duggins
Senior News Analyst
pduggins@wmfe.org


 

January 2, 2008—Like the "Shuttles returning to Capistrano", I was asked to do a New Year’s Day "look ahead" news story on what’s coming up for the Space Program in 2008. That kind of story is perennially popular on the first day of the year. The 2008 piece focused on what’s easily going to be the most watched mission of the year—the last mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.

Astronaut Scott Altman will lead the crew of seven, and their crew patch design is pictured at the left. When I was writing "Final Countdown" I ran into Altman at NASA’s first Space Exploration Conference at Walt Disney World in 2005. The Agency was still mulling over whether to risk a Shuttle and crew to go to the Hubble one more time. It’s risky since the observatory operates at a higher altitude than the International Space Station, and in a different orbital path. That means it may be impossible for Atlantis to retreat to the Station if it’s damaged. Altman commanded the last Hubble flight, and I asked him if he’d go again if asked. "Sure", he responded.

Later, NASA asked. Now, Altman and his crewmates will fly in August or September of this year, according to the mission schedule.

 

Also, many thanks for the kind e-mails regarding the New Year’s Day airing of my talk about "Final Countdown" on C-SPAN’s BookTV program. This shot is of a short interview C-SPAN did with me during the Sarasota Festival of Reading. For the bigger program, covering the better part of an hour, the network sent a crew to record my talk before the Orlando Rotary Club. In case you couldn’t pull yourself away from the Rose Bowl yesterday, here’s the link to the C-SPAN video clip. It’s unedited video, so scroll in six minutes to the beginning of the event.

http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=203165-1

Happy New Year!

More to come--

 

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