Discovery Voyage Just a Spin Around the Block

After a six-month hiatus, the space shuttle Discovery blasted off Thursday morning on a minimalist mission to the new International Space Station. Its stated purpose is to bring up 4,300 pounds of spare parts, tools, and clothing and to fix up some broken equipment. But the real reason can be summarized in two words: the Russians. "This is a busy-work mission to mark time until the Russians are ready to send up a critical service module," says TIME senior science writer Michael Lemonick. The Russian life-support module is already 18 months behind schedule and many observers feel that the country's economic problems could cause even further delays.

"Nothing about the space station has been on time or on budget," says Lemonick, and Thursday's mission simply underscores again the contention of many scientists that the whole space station project is a make-work project that was meant in large measure to keep former Soviet scientists occupied and out of trouble. The space station has been a huge drain, says Lemonick, preventing NASA from pursuing more worthwhile efforts such as the launching of more space probes to the outer planets and new space telescopes. The value of better telescopes was again demonstrated this week when scientists using precision measurements from the Hubble Space Telescope, narrowed the age of the universe to 12 billion years. "To astronomers' great relief," says Lemonick, "the information indicates the universe is not younger than the age previously calculated for its oldest stars."