Russian president Boris Yeltsin has pledged to transfer funding of $139 million for Russia's participation in the NASA-led International Space Station (ISS) later this month and to allocate a further $121 million in May.
This Russian financial commitment will do nothing to avoid the probable 11-month delay in the start of the construction of the ISS, from November 1997 to October 1998, already forced on NASA by Russian production difficulties (Flight International, 5-11 March).
NASA will also have to transfer $300 million from its Space Shuttle and general budgets to compensate for the Russian delays. If it does not get Congressional permission, the programme will be "shut down", says the US space agency.
NASA's new ISS schedule may include a US interim control module (ICM), to replace Russia's delayed service module until at least December 1999.
The service module was to have been launched in April 1998, to allow the first manning of the ISS in May 1998. Builder Khrunichev has taken out a $35 million loan to enable production to progress. Its delay has been the focal point of the ISS difficulties.
Although the Russian service module could be launched by December 1998, NASA has included an option to launch the $100 million ICM, based on a formerly classified US Naval Research Laboratory module.
This would be launched on the Shuttle in late 1998. Another version of the ICM may later be modified as a permanent propulsion module, if Russia continues to experience delays.
Russia's only ISS component to be produced on time - with the help of a $120 million NASA contract - is a propulsion module, called the FGB, which was to have been launched in November this year. The FGB may be modified to allow in-orbit re-fuelling to provide longer on-orbit maintenance. It could be launched in July 1998.
Another result of the delay will be to push the flight of the Space Shuttle to link the US Node 1 and associated equipment to the FGB to about October 1998, rather than June that year.
It is also likely that the US laboratory module, which will now fly in 1999, may have to be equipped with life-support equipment which was to have been flown on the Russian service module, reducing science-experiment space, but allowing a permanent manned presence in 1999.
Russia's negative influence on the ISS is causing increasing unrest in the US Congress and placing NASA under pressure. Although Russia's participation may have saved the ISS from cancellation in 1993, many Congressmen are now calling for Russia's exclusion.
Source: Flight International
