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Future Residents of Space Station Push for Chance

Posted on: Friday, 15 August 2003, 06:00 CDT

Aug. 15--The next resident crew of the international space station said Thursday it would be a mistake to suspend human activities aboard the 240-mile-high orbital base while NASA recovers from the loss of shuttle Columbia.

"For us to not step up and not continue in space on the international space station is, for me, not really an option," said Mike Foale, the NASA astronaut who will lead a mission to the space station in late October. "We need to show perseverance in our goals and dreams by maintaining a human presence in space."

"If we are able to maintain manned flight on board (the station), we must do it," added Alexander Kaleri, the Russian cosmonaut who will serve with Foale during the nearly seven-month mission. "That is why the station is up there."

The two men spoke at NASA's Johnson Space Center, where on Monday they began two weeks of training on the station's U.S. equipment.

At the end of the month, they'll return to Star City in Russia to continue their preparations before a scheduled Oct. 18 liftoff from Kazakhstan aboard a Soyuz rocket.

Columbia's fatal Feb. 1 breakup grounded NASA's space shuttle fleet and interrupted assembly of the station, a project shared by 16 nations.

Though the investigative board reviewing the causes of Columbia's loss plans to finish its work late this month, it's unclear how quickly NASA can resume shuttle flights.

Without the shuttle to ferry supplies to the space station, NASA and its partners have been forced to reduce the number of resident astronauts and cosmonauts from three to two.

Russia's three-person Soyuz and small Progress cargo capsules offer the only means of transporting people and supplies to the outpost.

Foale, 46, and Kaleri, 47, will replace the first of the two-person "caretaker" crews, cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and astronaut Edward Lu.

Malenchenko, the station commander, and Lu, the science officer, are scheduled to return to Earth on Oct. 28 aboard a Soyuz capsule already parked at the outpost.

They will be accompanied by European Space Agency astronaut Pedro Duque of Spain, who will travel to the station with Foale and Kaleri for a brief visit.

NASA has made tentative plans to resume shuttle missions between March 11 and April 6. However, guidelines for future flights established by the accident investigation board are likely to push the first post-Columbia mission later into 2004.

For Foale and Kaleri, that means a great deal of uncertainty over whether they will return to Earth landing in the United States aboard a shuttle or descend by parachute into remote Kazakhstan in a Soyuz capsule.

"This is one of the more interesting aspects of our flight. We don't really know how we will come home," said Foale.

"I would really not want to guess when (the first post-Columbia) will take place."

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(c) 2003, Houston Chronicle. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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