FLORIDA, June 1: Representatives of all the 16 countries involved in the international space station have approved an assembly schedule which will begin in November, one year late as Russia is facing financial crunch. Under the latest schedule released yesterday, the space station should be completed in early 2004. NASA estimates 43 flights will be needed to assemble the one million pound outpost in orbit, two less than before. The Russians will launch nine flights, three less than before. To save money, they cancelled two life-support modules and one stowage chamber. NASA, on the other hand, will launch 34 shuttle flights to haul up station parts, one more than before.Joe Rothenberg, head of NASA's space flight programme, acknowledged that the schedule is extremely tight and allows for few, if any, launch delays.
Everything is supposed to begin from November 20 when the Russians launch the first component, a power and propulsion module. The module has been named Zarya, meaning sunrise in Russianlanguage. On December 3, NASA will follow with the second part, a connecting passageway called Unity.
The third part, Russia's still unfinished service module, is to be launched from Kazakistan in April, 1999. The Russian government has yet to release all the funds necessary to complete the service module. The astronauts and cosmonauts cannot live on the space station until the service module and its life-support systems are launched.
Rothenberg said, the Russians are doing very well with the limited funding they have. "Nonetheless, NASA and the other station partners made it clear to the Russian space agency that the service module must receive top priority," he said.
"The Russians really do understand this," Rothenberg said. "They are going through a monetary crisis. They have established space station on priority basis and have committed all of the resources they have thus far to ensuring that the service module is going to make it to the schedule," he added.
If the service module flies in April,the first permanent station crew will blast off in a Russian Soyuz rocket in July, 1999, more than a year later than originally planned. The three-man crew, led by American William Shepherd, will spend five months aboard the outpost. Scientific research will begin, under the current plan, in 2000. And the station will switch from a three-person to six-person operation in 2002.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
