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Russia to taxi space station crewsStation occupancy to drop to two
By Richard Stenger
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Russian spacecraft will carry crews back and forth between the international space station and home this spring and perhaps again in October and next year, NASA's chief announced Thursday. The U.S. space agency worked out a deal with its Russian counterpart for Soyuz vehicles to bring home the current three residents and send up a crew of two in late April or early May, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said. Space shuttle flights are on hold following the loss of Columbia, which broke up February 1 during atmospheric re-entry with the loss of all seven astronauts. "We have agreed to use the Soyuz emergency egress spacecraft to rotate the expedition crew [on the space station]," O'Keefe told members of the House Science Committee on Thursday. The next flight will carry home the current station residents, two Americans and one Russian, and bring up a new crew of one astronaut and one cosmonaut, he said. "Those crew members have been named and are training in Star City right now," said O'Keefe, referring to the Moscow suburb where cosmonauts receive instruction in Soyuz and other Russian space systems. Future Soyuz missions could replace crews in October and again six months after that if international arrangements are finalized, according to NASA. Since the space station was first inhabited more than two years ago, U.S. shuttles have changed the three-person crews every five months or so. Once every six months, Moscow sends up a fresh Soyuz vehicle, which remains docked to the station and serves as an emergency lifeboat for the inhabitants of the modular outpost. The prospect of a smaller crew worries some space experts, who have said that at least three persons were necessary to handle basic maintenance operations and perform even a minimal amount of science on the orbiting outpost. The new agreement, which came after consultations with other partners in the 16-nation project, includes stepped-up flights of unmanned Russian spacecraft in 2003 and 2004, according to O'Keefe. Called Progress, these cargo ships bring food, fuel and supplies to the station. "We have agreed to accelerate the flights of the Progress," he said. Despite the announcement, extended U.S.-Russian arrangements could hit some snags. The cash-strapped Russian space agency had sold a number of seats on upcoming flights of the three-person Soyuz craft to the European Space Agency, which has planned to send up European astronauts. Moreover, there remains the question of U.S. laws that could prevent the United States from giving cash infusions to the Russian space program to build Progress rockets, due to objections over nuclear technology accords between Moscow and Iran. CNN Space Producer David Santucci contributed to this report.
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