"Triana is worthy of bipartisan congressional support and should not be kept earthbound -- instead it should fly as scheduled next year," said Neal Lane, President Bill Clinton's science adviser, after the report's release.

NASA officials planned to send a letter later today to lawmakers indicating they would start spending money again on the project, which Congress ordered halted last fall until the report by the National Research Council (NRC) was complete.

Congress insisted last year on the study, and ordered a halt to the program until the results were in. James Duderstadt, president emeritus of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, led the team of scientists, which toiled under the lengthy title of Scientific Aspects of the NASA Triana Space Mission.

The panel concluded that Triana has scientific merit. But the panel also warns that "there may not be adequate time for instrument testing and calibration prior to launch" and added that there may not be enough money set aside to analyze the data once the spacecraft is in orbit.

Triana got its start from the top down. Gore proposed the idea to NASA in 1998, and immediately it drew criticism from Republicans like Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin). The vice president's idea -- to place a spacecraft at a point 994,240 miles (1.6 million kilometers) out in order to beam back a continuous picture of the daytime Earth -- was lambasted as an expensive boondoggle best left to the private sector rather than government.

NASA, however, gathered researchers to help add scientific content to the program, such as ozone, temperature and other instruments designed to take advantage of the full view of the Earth. The NRC panel says that the unique position of Triana "has the potential to provide data that can address several high-priority and conceptual issues" which are considered scientifically important.

For example, the spacecraft could give researchers new information to compare with observations already made by orbiting spacecraft and with data gathered on Earth. Triana also could provide early warning of solar storms, as well as give weather forecasters and emergency officials an important global view of hurricanes, fires and other natural disasters.

The panel members, however, expressed their nervousness at the fast pace of the program, noting that they have neither the time nor the money to do an in-depth technical review of the program. They warn that "under no circumstances should this report or the statements contained in it be used as a replacement for these technical evaluations."