
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, July 19, 1990                   TAG: 9007190417
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: C-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

EX-NASA CHIEF: HUBBLE CONTRACTOR CERTIFIED

Former NASA Administrator James Beggs said Wednesday that the manufacturer of the flawed Hubble Space Telescope mirrors was certified by the Air Force and that the space agency was assured the work would be properly tested.

Beggs, NASA administrator from 1981 to 1986, said that Perkin Elmer, the Danbury, Conn., company that made the mirrors, had done similar work in the past for the Department of Defense and the Air Force had assured the agency the work would be done properly on Hubble.

"NASA had every right to expect the contractor to grind that lens to the right figure [prescription]," Beggs told a Senate appropriations subcommittee. "We had been assured that the Perkin Elmer people were competent," he said, noting that their work had been "certified by the Air Force."

- Associated Press

by CNB