Tragedy and Triteness - In addition to on-going Mars rover coverage, expect this weekend to bring many news packages with the theme "Columbia: One Year Later." (Here's a link to the Beav's own commentary last year.) The NFL will even "help" by including a tribute in its typically tasteless, rarely entertaining Super Bowl half-time show. For a gripping detailed account of the Columbia's final moments, see this Newsday excerpt.

On a related note, controversy has erupted over the cancellation of a final refurbishment mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. Critics of human spaceflight have lined up against this move, petitioning to save HST and laying the blame squarely on Bush's new Moon-Mars agenda. But the fact is that the board investigating Columbia's loss insisted on a host of new safety measures for shuttle missions, including the ability to shelter astronauts in space should an orbiter become too damaged to re-enter the atmosphere. Since the only such shelter available is the space station, NASA has decided to cancel all future missions that don't go there. In effect, Hubble is the victim of the decision to shut down the shuttle, not lack of funding. But earthbound politicians (especially those representing HST's home base in Maryland) got all hot and bothered, so NASA Chief Sean O'Keefe has offered to get a second opinion directly from the CAIB chairman Hal Gehman.

Didn't we just get through saying that safety at NASA shouldn't be at the whim of political agendas? Let's hope Hal puts Mikulski in her place. In case you're curious, after it conks out around after 2006, Hubble is slated for replacement anyway by the more powerful Webb Space Telescope, which, curiously enough, will also be managed out of Baltimore.