Russian space vehicle may retrieve space station crew

Even with its shuttles grounded, NASA can easily retrieve the astronauts aboard the international space station using Russian vehicles.

A Soyuz vehicle attached to the space station could bring the three astronauts onboard back to Earth at a moment's notice. But if the space agency's remaining shuttles are out of service for an extended period in the wake of Saturday's catastrophe, as seems likely, it could prove difficult to maintain the station's operations.

"This is clearly a big setback for station because during the rest of this year shuttles were supposed to carry up lots of big pieces of hardware for assembly," said John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.

NASA plans call for expanding the space station during five shuttle flights this year. On the next flight, scheduled for launch March 1, shuttle Atlantis had orders to deliver supplies and scientific equipment. Subsequent missions this year call for installing a framework of external trusses and solar arrays.

"Certainly there is a hold on future flights until we get ourselves established and understand how this happened," space shuttle program manager Ron Dittemore said Saturday.

Russian space agency officials said they were ready to pick up some of the slack if NASA grounds its shuttle fleet. But with Russia's ability to launch supply vehicles to the international station already compromised by budget problems, the loss of U.S. space shuttle Columbia could seriously jeopardize the continued operation of the outpost.

With no permanent crew aboard, the space station can operate in a "dormant" mode as long as occasional maintenance is performed by visiting astronauts. In fact, NASA had already been considering a "demanning" contingency for 2003 before Saturday's events.

But the longer the station went unoccupied, the greater the chances that it would deteriorate to an uninhabitable state.

Expedition Six, as the current crew is called, arrived at the station in November and has been scheduled to return in March. The crew consists of NASA astronauts Ken Bowersox and Don Pettit and Russian Soyuz commander Nikolai Budarin. The three men could remain where they are until June without a visit from the space shuttle, program manager Dittemore said.

The Columbia shuttle mission that tragically ended Saturday over eastern Texas did not visit the space station. But the crews of the two spacecraft did speak by telephone on Jan. 28, the anniversary of the Challenger disaster that killed seven astronauts 17 years ago.

An unmanned supply vessel was to be launched today from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome. It was scheduled to arrive at the orbiting station Tuesday.