Tim Furniss/LONDON
Russia's Energia company has confirmed that the Zvezda service module to the International Space Station (ISS) will not be launched until August at the earliest, rather than March/April as planned.
The slippage has been caused by delays in the Zvezda schedule and by concerns about the reliability of the Proton launch vehicle, which is due to launch the module, after two failures in 1999.
The second-stage engines on the Proton will have to be replaced following problems with the original engines.
The latest ISS delay means that there are likely to be just two Space Shuttle missions until the third quarter of the year. STS99 Endeavour will be launched in February on a non-ISS radar mission and STS101 Atlantis will fly in March (Flight International, 11-17 January).
Once the Zvezda is in orbit, the STS101 mission will be repeated to outfit the Zvezda module, to allow the long-delayed STS92 Discovery assembly mission to go ahead. It is unlikely that the first Expedition Crew will board the ISS until the end of the year. Continued Russian delays could force NASA to abandon the Zvezda for now and proceed with a fast launch of the Naval Research Laboratory's Interim Control Module.
Meanwhile, the Space Station Studies Board of the National Research Council supports NASA's proposal that a private consortium should manage ISS operations and that it should start well before the completion of the ISS in 2005.
Source: Flight International
