Missing parts vex space station crew

From left: Crew members Sergei Krikalev, Yuri Gidzenko and Bill Shepherd work inside the space station

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) -- The crew of the International Space Station have a toilet, a food warmer and video-conferencing technology, but they're running short on oxygen and have sometimes seemed overwhelmed by all the unpacking they must do, NASA said Friday.

The crew of two Russians and their American commander arrived Thursday and have been breathing the air already aboard the 13-story structure. That, plus some supplemental supplies, should be enough to last them until they have installed a Russian-made system that separates the oxygen and hydrogen molecules in water stored aboard the station.

The water is a by-product of power generators on U.S. space shuttles. Shuttle crews have been leaving the water behind during visits over the past two years.

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The real problem facing astronauts Bill Shepherd, Sergei Krikolyov and Yuri Gidzenko is tons of stowed supplies and hardware that clog the narrow corridors of the station.

Thursday they had to eat their first meal without forks, spoons or knives that they couldn't locate. A food warmer that was supposed to take 30 minutes to install consumed hours of their time when they could not find a cable.

The problem, said Jeff Hanley, lead flight director for the NASA portion of the mission, is "a few things have fallen through the cracks."

Not literally, of course, nothing falls in the weightlessness of space, but the written procedures the crew carried with them into orbit have not been entirely reliable.

That led Shepherd to advise his bosses at NASA Mission Control, "We worked really hard yesterday and we could not keep up with the timeline. We're way behind today, too."

As Hanley explained, the situation in space is far from chaotic, but when the crew cannot find something they have no alternative but to call on Russian ground controllers, who are calling the shots during this early phase of the mission.

Illustration of the International Space Station at its current stage of completion

Russian ground stations are only available when the space station is passing over one of them, which means the crew can communicate with the ground only about 10-15 minutes at most out of each 90-minute orbit.

When the U.S. takes over day-to-day control of the station next year, crews will be in communication with the ground for all but a few minutes of each orbit, due to a NASA satellite system designed for use by the space shuttle program.

The $60 billion-plus space-station project is a joint effort by the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada. When finished in 2006, it should be one of the brightest objects in the nighttime sky.

The U.S. space shuttle Endeavour is on its launch pad at Florida's Kennedy Space Center for a launch later this month that will begin a new phase of construction on the U.S. segment of the station.

The U.S. laboratory module, Destiny, is to be added in January.

The current space station crew, known as Expedition One, will serve until February, when they will be replaced by a crew of two Americans and a Russian commander. Crew command is scheduled to pass between the two nations throughout the construction phase of the station's life.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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NASA
Boeing: International Space Station
NASA: Human Spaceflight
Russian Space Agency

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