Under questioning from Lewis and others, Goldin conceded that a dedicated science mission, STS-107, was under consideration for addition to the shuttle flight manifest, tentatively set to fly in mid-2000.
"We will not walk away from the research community," Goldin emphasized.
The Administrator went on to explain that NASA had just entered into a $43 million contract with a commercial entity, Spacehab, Inc., to develop habitable modules to provide space-based laboratory facilities aboard the space shuttle.
These modules would allow NASA and its international partners to conduct coordinated research while the space station was under construction; eventually, the agency would agree to use approximately 80 percent of the Spacehab module space for the STS-107 mission.
The space science community, faced with the prospect of a long drought of research opportunities, was thrilled at the prospect of a dedicated science spaceflight.
"Missions like STS-107 were inserted into the manifest to do science as if they were on the space station," according to NASA scientist John Charles, intended to keep researchers " actively engaged and productive and moving forward until the space station can assume the leading role in research."
As NASA jockeyed to secure funding to fly a newly-conceived standalone shuttle flight -- a subtle admission that space station construction woes were indeed impacting basic science research -- the creation of mission STS-107 would provide an opportunity for the Clinton Administration to solve a foreign policy dilemma.
On Dec. 11, 1995, President Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres announced a joint agreement for the two countries "to proceed with space-based experiments in sustainable water use and environmental protection."
As part of the deal, Israel would nominate an astronaut candidate to be trained as a payload specialist to conduct an Israeli Space Agency scientific experiment with the approval of NASA.
Scheduling a spaceflight for a still-untrained Israeli astronaut had far-reaching implications. NASA, facing relentless pressure by both the Congress and its 15 international partners, had earmarked virtually all of its upcoming space shuttle missions for space station construction.
The few upcoming non-construction missions such as launching the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and servicing the Hubble Space Telescope left little or no room for adding science experiments or guest astronauts.
Complicating matters, the training of an Israeli astronaut would take close to two years, pushing his first potential flight opportunity to sometime in mid-2000, at the earliest.
The space station would still be under construction at that point and unable to support any serious scientific research, and, of greater significance, Israel is not one of the 16 nations participating in and funding the ISS.
NASA would be hard-pressed to allow an Israeli astronaut to conduct research on the space station while Canadian, European and Japanese astronauts remained grounded.
A space shuttle mission dedicated strictly to science, not space station construction, would fit the bill perfectly. And, it should be ready to fly by mid-2000.
Within days of Goldins remarks before the House Subcommittee, Israeli Air Force Col. Ilan Ramon, and his back-up Lt. Col. Yitzhak May, flew to Houstons Johnson Space Center in April 1998 for physical and psychological testing. By July 1998, training of Israels first two astronaut candidates began in earnest.
The proposed U.S./Israeli space experiment -- the Mediterranean-Israel Dust Experiment or MEIDEX -- was approved for use during the Israeli payload specialists mission. NASAs Shuttle Small Payloads Project Office noted that the MEIDEX experiment would need to be flown in an orbit inclined 39 degrees to the equator to achieve its science objectives and that its equipment was not compatible for use on the station.
The addition of mission STS-107 to the shuttle flight schedule also piqued the attention of an interested bystander -- Vice-President Al Gore -- the heir apparent for the 2000 Democratic presidential nomination.
Two weeks prior to Goldins Congressional testimony, Gore announced at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that he was "challenging" NASA to build an inexpensive, $25 to $50 million satellite to broadcast continuous, live images of the fully sunlit Earth, available 24 hours per day over the Internet and television.
Claiming he conceived the idea after awakening from a dream, Gore personally named his satellite "Triana" after Rodrigo de Triana, Christopher Columbus lookout who first spotted the New World in 1492.
Deploying Triana from Columbias payload bay on STS-107 would be the perfect solution to keep his pet project "affordable" by eliminating the cost of an expensive ride to orbit on an expendable rocket.
Goldin quickly embraced Gores idea, but critics soon referred to Triana as "AlGoreSat" or "GoreCam," dismissing claims of valuable science as political pandering on NASAs part to curry favor with the potential future president.
Micro-gravity scientists openly criticized Trianas inclusion on STS-107, complaining that they were being hampered by weight limitations to offset the satellites weight, and at least one detractor claimed that deploying Triana violated the space agencys own stringent post-Challenger restrictions on carrying non-critical payloads on the shuttle.
Following a negative assessment by NASAs own inspector general that the cash-strapped agency could ill-afford the spacecraft -- with project costs running more than four times Gores original $50 million estimate -- Congress demanded an independent review of Trianas scientific merit.
With construction halted pending evaluation by the National Academy of Sciences, Triana could not be completed in time to meet the STS-107 target launch date and was pulled from the flight in July 2000, replaced by a pallet of experiments called Freestar that would fit into the location reserved for Triana.
The partially-completed Triana remains in storage awaiting a launch opportunity.
Once funding was secured, STS-107 was officially added to the shuttle flight manifest in September 1999 with a target launch date of late 2000.
Shuttle Columbia, however, was undergoing an unprecedented overhaul that would last 17 months, eight months longer than the usual nine.
A near-calamity occurred in July 1999 shortly after Columbia was launched with the $1.5 billion, 50,000 pound Chandra X-Ray Observatory in its cargo bay - the heaviest payload ever carried by the space shuttle.
Just five seconds after launch, a short-circuit in a single worn wire caused computer controllers on two of the shuttles three main engines to shut down. Fortunately, the backup controllers took over instantly.
Then a dislodged pin damaged cooling tubes in one of the same engines, causing more than 2,500 pounds of liquid oxygen to leak out. Columbias main engines shut down one second early when the vehicle essentially ran out of propellant.
During the extensive refurbishment, inspectors uncovered more than 7,000 wiring defects while examining almost every inch of Columbias 235 miles of wire.
Re-wiring Columbia pushed back the STS-107 launch until August 2001, then again to July 2002 following a higher-priority Hubble servicing mission.
Then, just weeks before STS-107's planned launch date, the entire shuttle fleet was again grounded when tiny cracks were discovered in fuel line baffles in the main engines.
Once repairs were made, NASA decided that the space station construction flights took precedence over space science and Columbias launch date was bumped one last time, to January 16, 2003.
Flying a mission forged by the unusual confluence of politics, foreign policy and scientific interests, Columbias talented crew made the most of their unique opportunity.
A wealth of scientific information including promising results from a life sciences experiment on prostate cancer tumor growth were down-linked or transmitted to the ground during the 16-day research mission.
NASA scientist David Liskowsky estimates that " anywhere between 50 to 90 percent of the data was acquired," for experiments in the physical science disciplines of combustion research, material sciences, and fluid physics carried on Columbias final mission.
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