Schedule to Complete Space Station Is Advanced

March 3, 2006
From the New York Times:

Schedule to Complete Space Station Is Advanced
By WARREN E. LEARY

WASHINGTON, March 2 — Partners in the International Space Station agreed Thursday
to launch European and Japanese components earlier than originally planned to
ensure they were functioning by 2010, when the orbiting space laboratory is to be
fully assembled.

Heads of the space agencies representing the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan
and Canada met at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to work on a new plan for
completing the $100 billion space station.

At a news conference after the meeting, Michael D. Griffin, the NASA administrator,
said the agency planned 16 more flights of the space shuttle to finish the station
by the end of the decade. NASA's three shuttles — Atlantis, Discovery and Endeavour
— are the only spacecraft large enough to carry major station components.

The partner nations also agreed to increase to six the number of space station crew
members in 2009. The station has been operating with a two-member crew since the
Columbia disaster three years ago grounded the shuttle fleet. The number is to
return to three with the next flight of the shuttle, as early as May 10.

A space shuttle has flown once since the Columbia accident; the fleet was grounded
again after the Discovery's mission in July. In its launching, more foam insulation
fell from its external fuel tank than expected. The debris was blamed for fatally
damaging the Columbia.

Mr. Griffin said the adjusted sequence for building the station shifted priorities,
moving up the completion of the station's platform.

"We don't like that," Mr. Griffin said. "But confronted with a choice between
having high confidence to complete the assembly of the station or utilizing it
heavily as we built it and possibly not finishing, we chose the former course."

One component dropped from the shuttle manifest is a Russian solar power platform.

Anatolii Perminov, head of the Russian Federal Space Agency, said his country
agreed to draw power from the American-built power system through 2015 in place of
its own, and proposed plans to stockpile Russian Soyuz and Progress spacecraft to
maintain the station.

NASA said station construction flights could resume as early as August, if it is
determined that the shuttle could be used safely.

NASA now plans to launch Europe's Columbus research segment on the seventh
construction flight, said Jean-Jacques Dordain, director general of the European
Space Agency, moving it up by one flight.

Keiji Tachikawa, president of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, said the
first of three components for the large Japanese Experiment Module is now scheduled
one flight earlier in 2007.

Even though some components will be dropped and a new assembly schedule has been
introduced, Mr. Griffin said the completed station would do what it was originally
intended to do. "It's the same space station," he said. "The end product is very
much as we envisioned it."

In Washington on Thursday, the House Science Committee held a hearing on NASA's
intention to hold down spending on space science for four years to pay $3 billion
in added space shuttle expenses. Representative Sherwood Boehlert, the New York
Republican who is the committee chairman, and other members of Congress expressed
concern over the loss of research projects and the disruption of project teams.

At the hearing, some scientists argued that NASA was sacrificing small space
projects valuable for training graduate students and advancing science to sustain
some big programs. Others said the United States was risking its leadership in
space science.

"I think these assessments are wrong," Mr. Griffin said when asked about the
testimony.

NASA still has a space science program and spends $5 billion a year on it, he said.
The notion that the program was collapsing, he added, was an "almost hysterical"
reaction.