Russian space chief says US shuttle missions to ISS to resume next April
Posted on: Friday, 1 August 2003, 06:00 CDT
Excerpt from report in English by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS
Washington, 1 August: The US National Aerospace Agency (NASA) expects its multiple-use spacecraft (shuttles) to resume flights in April of next year after a suspension of many months that followed the Columbia shuttle crash on 1 February [2003].
Director-General of the Russian Aerospace Agency (Rosaviakosmos) Yuriy Koptev, who is paying a working visit to the United States, told ITAR-TASS that he had taken part in a meeting of the heads of the space agencies of the member countries that are engaged in the international space station project and learned about the American plans.
He noted that the commission that is investigating the causes of the Columbia disaster had not yet completed its work, but it is close to completion. The commission will get a report on its activity ready "only at the end of August", and "it will take another month to coordinate all the explanations, interpretations and procedures" between the commission and the congress, as well as the US administration.
Koptev went on to say, "the working version of the further action plan" will be discussed in Moscow in the middle of October at the next meeting of the leaders of the space agencies of the countries building the ISS (International Space Station).
Koptev specified that the meeting would take place when a Soyuz spaceship is launched to take a new ISS crew into orbit "some time between 12 and 16 October 2003".
The Rosaviakosmos head also noted, "Our European and Japanese colleagues have been very active" (during the Monterey meeting) "in their efforts to promote their own transport systems". "The Europeans hope to launch an automated transport spaceship in the third or fourth quarter of next year," Koptev said.
[passage omitted]
He said that the problem of granting additional funds to Rosaviakosmos for the period of the moratorium on space shuttle launches had yet to be resolved.
"The only decision that has been made so far concerns the redistribution of the funds within the framework of the initiative which the Russian president and the prime minister supported earlier. The initiative provides for the transfer of R1.2bn from the Rosaviakosmos budget from the third and fourth quarters to the second quarter of 2003," Koptev said.
"This transaction has been carried out. The industry received extra funds in May-June, 2003 and somehow managed to step up the construction of new spacecraft and rockets," Koptev went on to say.
"We are waiting for the government to discuss the distribution of additional budget incomes in September. We've submitted our reasons and concerns about it," the Rosaviakosmos chief emphasized.
Russian Soyuz manned spaceships and Progress space ferries remain the only means of delivering crews and usable payloads to the International Space Station for the duration of the moratorium.
Two Soyuz spaceships and four or five Progress spacecraft are to be launched in 2004, he said, adding one Soyuz and two Progress spacecraft will travel to the International Space Station this year.
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