Word: orbitally
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Without regular servicing missions—one of which was scheduled for 2004 until NASA’s shuttle fleet was grounded in the wake of Columbia disaster—the Hubble will literally fall out of orbit. Instead of reinstating the cancelled servicing mission, however, NASA officials and the Bush administration have decided to pull the plug on the orbiting telescope. The administration’s recently released 2006 budget sets aside only $93 million for Hubble (out of a total NASA budget of $2.5 billion), $75 million of which will be spent to ensure the telescope safely crashes...
Though a servicing mission would be pricey, it would also be worth it. Hubble’s three previous servicing missions have not only restored the telescope’s ability to stay in orbit, they have added additional capabilities and instruments, bringing about a bumper crop of new scientific discoveries in their wakes. Servicing mission number four was to be no different, but now the add-ons planned for Hubble will be grounded forever...
...officials and Taliban fighters and sympathizers in the frontier Pakistani cities of Quetta and Peshawar. Those exiles include Mohammed Omar, the one-eyed mullah who formerly led the Taliban. Pakistan's reluctance, according to a senior Kabul official, stems from its "nostalgia" for when Afghanistan was firmly within its orbit of influence. Letting the Taliban remain free gives Pakistan a card to play if or when the U.S. decides to vacate Afghanistan. "If money and support were to stop from the Pakistani side, the Taliban would be finished," says Mullah "Rocketi," a former Taliban commander who earned his nickname...
...example, he observes, when it was first realized that planets go around the sun, astronomers hoped they might find an underlying principle that would explain why the planets orbit at the precise distances they do. But now we know the orbits are the result of pure chance. The elliptical shapes of planetary orbits, on the other hand, led to the truly profound discovery of Newton's laws of gravity. "My own feeling," says Brian Greene, a superstring theorist at Columbia University and author of the best-selling The Fabric of the Cosmos, "is that we can give a deeper explanation...
Critics say that more often than not she simply has settled into orbit around the real power centers of U.S. foreign policy: Vice President Dick Cheney and his ally Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "She's getting this job because she's not a threat," says retired Lieut. General William Odom of the conservative Hudson Institute. When Rice tried to impose order on prewar planning, Rumsfeld ignored her. Vice President Cheney established a broad and powerful shadow National Security Council early in the Administration and used his close relationship with Bush to drive White House decision making. Yet some foreign diplomats...