Limited Crew Delays Space Station Work
April 25 -- The year 2003 was supposed to be big for the International Space Station.
Shuttle flights were scheduled to launch nearly 90,000 pounds of components, supplies and experiments to the station and astronauts were trained to connect and wire the final pieces to the station's core structure.
Back in December, NASA Station Program Manager Bill Gerstenmaier said, "The year ahead will be the most complex so far in the history of the International Space Station and its construction in orbit."
Of course, that all changed when Columbia disintegrated 40 miles above Earth on Feb. 1, prompting NASA officials to delay all shuttle flights until at least this fall.
Instead of a shuttle loaded with supplies and a seven-member crew docking at the station, two men are due to launch late today for the orbital outpost from Kazakhstan in a small, Russian-made Soyuz ship.
"This flight has extra meaning. Our close friends did perish two months ago," American astronaut Edward Lu said in a recent press conference. "But this doesn't mean we should stop what we're doing, stop at the first setback."
Work won't stop at the station, but it will be significantly slowed.
Gyroscope, Spinal Parts Must Wait
The reduced crew of two, Lu and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, will maintain the space station and carry out about 20 hours of research a week over their six-month stay.
Assembly work is on hold since supplies are usually carried on U.S. shuttles and Lu and Malenchenko won't be able to tick off most of the station's previously scheduled work.
Some tabled tasks include the installing of a solar-power gyroscope designed to keep the space station at the correct attitude without sucking up crucial propellant. The new gyroscope had been scheduled to go up in March on an Atlantis flight that was postponed.
Four other postponed shuttle flights were to deliver new sections to the station's truss — or spine — for installation in 2003. The segments not only included the main stem parts but the wing-like solar arrays that are fitted to attach. Also on hold are new wiring and solar panels that had been slated to triple the station's power supply.
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