The five international partners building the space station have laid out a new schedule to complete the outpost before 2010, when NASA must retire the space shuttle fleet.
NASA Administrator Mike Griffin made it clear during a press conference on Thursday that his goal is to make use of 16 remaining shuttle flights to ensure the half-built station is finished, so fulfilling NASA鈥檚 international obligations.
By focusing solely on assembly 鈥� rather than on using the station for research at the same time 鈥� he said the team can have high confidence that it will complete the station using the shuttles and a complement of international vehicles.
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The briefing followed a meeting involving the leaders of the five space agencies involved in the space station鈥檚 construction 鈥� NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), the Russian Federal Space Agency, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the Canadian Space Agency.
鈥淲e are largely deferring utilisation and we are paring logistics to the bone,鈥� Griffin explained.
Painful decision
While admitting that earlier plans to utilise the station during its construction were the ideal, he said current circumstances 鈥� with ISS construction stalled by the shuttle Columbia disaster 鈥� have led him to make the 鈥渙bvious鈥� decision to push for completion without utilisation.
Like recent budgetary decisions to defer several science missions, he said the decision was painful. 鈥淏ut the painfulness of the choice does not render it less obvious,鈥� he said.
The new assembly schedule will enable the station to support six-person crews from 2009. And the addition of two large experimental laboratories to the ISS have been shifted up the launch queue. These are ESA鈥檚 Columbus module and JAXA鈥檚 three-part Japanese Experiment Module (JEM), dubbed 鈥淜ibo鈥�.
The Columbus laboratory is now scheduled to launch on the seventh shuttle flight from now. JAXA鈥檚 three-part JEM is expected on the eighth, ninth and twelfth shuttle flights, in 2007 and 2008. The dates assume assembly gets back underway in August with space shuttle Atlantis mission STS-121.
Of course that also depends on the second Return to Flight shuttle mission, which NASA hopes to launch in May 2006.
Schedule slack
The new schedule does allow some leeway and Griffin said even if NASA only manages two shuttle missions, rather than three, in 2006, the station will still be complete in 2010. 鈥淲e have substantial schedule slack at this point 鈥� almost a full year,鈥� he said.
Anatoly Perminov, head of the Russian Federal Space Agency, proposed to make a 鈥渟tock鈥� of vehicles to help with the transportation flow to the space station. And he added 鈥渨e鈥檝e considered utilising the space station beyond the year 2015鈥�. Griffin declined to speculate about how the station would be used once complete, but he said 鈥渢he end product is very much as we envisioned it鈥�.
Mark Mulqueen, space station vehicle director for Boeing, told New 杏吧原创 the Boeing-built components of the station, such as Node 1 鈥� the passageway connecting the living and working areas on the ISS 鈥� which has been in space since 1998, have performed better than expected. The remaining pieces of station hardware built by the company are already stored at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where they are regularly inspected and tested. The hardware is built to last at least 15 years in orbit.
鈥淭his is just the beginning of life [for the space station] and there鈥檚 not been a major degradation as we鈥檝e been waiting to get back to flight with the shuttle,鈥� Mulqueen says.
