TIM FURNISS / LONDON
Launch plans confirm commitment, but funding still an issue as partners vote to make best use of research elements
Russia has denied reports that Soyuz launches to the International Space Station (ISS) will be discontinued after July 2003 due to budget cuts. Russian Space Agency head Yuri Koptev has affirmed the country's commitment to the ISS, saying there will be two manned Soyuz TMA and three Progress M tanker launches next year.
Speaking at the 16-nation ISS meeting in Tokyo on 6 December, Koptev confirmed that two Soyuz TMA spacecraft would be attached to the station at all times from 2006, to support an enlarged crew, but he was unable to confirm funding for the plan. Koptev said it was his agency's task to "persuade the government that increased financing in the next three years was necessary to ensure that Russia's part in the ISS was not reduced to technological and transport functions".
The Tokyo meeting, which involved NASA and the space agencies of its four international partners, endorsed a plan to maximise use of the station's research elements in 2006-7. The plan will require a six-person crew, with rescue capability provided initially by additional Soyuz vehicles and eventually by both Soyuz and NASA's planned Orbital Space Plane, which is scheduled to enter service in 2010 as a crew rescue vehicle. Greater use of the ISS will also require additional Space Shuttle support, NASA says.
At the meeting, the partners also agreed on a process for selecting an ISS configuration beyond that accommodating the current international elements. "This process includes further technical and programmatic assessment, cost estimation, and internal budgetary reviews by each partner," the agency heads said in a joint statement. A configuration option recommendation is scheduled for March next year, followed by selection at an ISS partner meeting in Moscow in June/July and final agreement at a meeting in Washington DC in December.
Space Shuttle Endeavour, meanwhile, completed the latest ISS mission with a 7 December landing at Florida's Kennedy Space Center that was just within the 15kt (28km/h) crosswind limit, and came after three wave-offs due to bad weather that resulted in the longest landing delay in the Shuttle programme.
The STS 113 mission lasted almost 14 days and returned Expedition Crew 5 to Earth after 185 days on the ISS.
The final component of the ISS integrated truss structure arrives at Kennedy's Space Station processing facility next week. The Starboard 6 segment will be launched in 2004 on a Shuttle mission to complete assembly of the 220m (720ft)-long ISS truss, which supports solar arrays, radiators and a railway for the robotic manipulator system. The segment includes the fourth and final set of solar arrays.
The spacewalk planned by Expedition Crew 6 for 12 December, to outfit the recently attached Port 1 truss segment and to prepare the station to receive another truss segment in March, has been delayed until January 2003.
Source: Flight International
