ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, August 9, 1996 TAG: 9608090052
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA.
SOURCE: MARCIA DUNN ASSOCIATED PRESS
NOTE: Below
IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE and may set off an invasion of the money snatchers, a taxpayer group warns.
For years, NASA has been trying to recapture the glory days of Apollo by wrestling broken satellites, flying to a foreign space station and unreeling 12 miles of orbital electric cord.
It turns out the key may have been locked in a rock that fell from the sky.
The rock - a meteorite from Mars with supposed evidence of early life - has the potential to fire the public imagination and rekindle interest in the space program.
``It's undoubtedly the most exciting thing I've done in my 27 years as a scientist,'' NASA's Everett Gibson said at a news conference Wednesday announcing the find. ``I have to admit it does beat Apollo in the excitement there, and that was tough to do.''
NASA researchers say orange-colored particles inside the meteorite harbor chemical and organic evidence that bacteria-type organisms lived and thrived on Mars 3.6billion years ago. Other scientists are skeptical. Everyone agrees more studies are needed.
Since the announcement, hundreds of calls have poured into the space agency's headquarters in Washington, mostly from reporters around the world. There's so much traffic on NASA's Wide World Web pages that employees have set up another computer to ease the load.
And President Clinton promised to hold a space summit in November to ``discuss how America should pursue answers'' to questions prompted by the Mars research.
The last time NASA got so much attention was for its worst tragedy: the Challenger disaster 10 years ago.
While NASA hasn't requested more money to expand its Mars studies - two American spacecraft, a lander and an orbiter, are supposed to lead the charge later this year - one budget watchdog group already is warning taxpayers to ``calm down and watch your wallet.''
``Here come the space spin doctors with a billion-dollar bacteria boondoggle,'' Ralph DeGennaro, executive director of Taxpayers for Common Sense, said in a statement Thursday. ``If NASA wants to add money to the Mars program, then it must subtract money from wasteful programs of questionable science value. As for summits, there should be no space summit until we have a summit to balance the budget.''
NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin insisted that money is no longer the magic ingredient it was back in the men-on-the-moon days and that it's much too soon to begin mounting a human expedition.
The space agency has cut its budget and work force drastically in recent years at White House request, and more cutbacks are expected.
``I think exploration is necessary,'' Goldin said. ``But let's not say, `We have found full evidence of low-level biological life on Mars, give us money, let's have a big mission.' Let's go through a systematic process.''
Space policy analyst John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists worries that this week's announcement and the space summit will ``dissipate into another photo op or two, and we'll be straight back to business as usual.''
Extra money or no, life on Mars or not, NASA is reveling in all the attention after so many years of being bad-mouthed for failed missions and wasted tax dollars. Whether this will last remains to be seen.
``I would maintain as a NASA spokesman that people generally are interested in and support the space program,'' the agency's Brian Welch said. ``But whether they're going to leap up and down and that's the very first thing they think to talk about among their fellow citizens, probably not. Unless you have a startling piece of news like we did yesterday.''
He added: ``You can only have a press conference like this once.''
LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Photographers take pictures of celebrity meteoriteby CNBALH84001 during a NASA news conference Wednesday. color.