Space Shuttle program to the International Space Station (ISS), as the station could be used as a safe haven for the crew awaiting rescue in the event that damage to the orbiter on ascent made it unsafe for re-entry. The board recommended that for the remaining flights, the shuttle always orbit with the station. Prior to STS-114, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe declared that all future flights of the shuttle would go to the ISS, precluding the possibility of executing the final Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission which had been scheduled before the "Columbia" accident, despite the fact that millions of dollars worth of
Spitzer Space Telescope obscuring effects of Earth's atmosphere. In 1979, a report from the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, "A Strategy for Space Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 1980s", identified a Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) as "one of two major astrophysics facilities [to be developed] for Spacelab", a Shuttle-borne platform. Anticipating the major results from an upcoming Explorer satellite and from the Shuttle mission, the report also favored the "study and development of ... long-duration spaceflights of infrared telescopes cooled to cryogenic temperatures." The launch in January 1983 of the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, jointly developed by the United