Next space crew ready for a whole year in orbit, Russia captain says

Excerpt from report by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS

Star City (Moscow Region), 31 March: Expedition 9 to the International Space Station, which is due to lift off from Baykonur on 19 April, is ready to stay in orbit for a whole year, its commander, Russia’s Gennadiy Padalka, told a pre-mission news conference at Mission Control today.

“There are three stand-out events in a cosmonaut’s life,” he said. “Selection, lift-off and Earth asking you to stay on in orbit.”

Russia has suggested to NASA extending the main expeditions’ tours of duty from six months to a year, ITAR-TASS was told at the Federal Space Agency [FSA].

The need to extend tours of duty in space is due to “the moratorium on American shuttle flights, which has made Russia solely responsible for shipping crews and cargoes into space”, Agency spokesman Sergey Gorbunov said. “And as a result, the FSA has lost most of the extra-budgetary funding it used to get from flying European astronauts and space tourists,” he added. That money was used to fund FSA programmes.

“If NASA agrees, then Expedition 10, which is due to go up in October, could start preparing for a year in space,” Gorbunov said. The FSA also announced that Expedition 9 backups, Russia’s Salizhan Sharipov and NASA’s Leroy Chaio, will probably go to the International Space Station in October. “A year in space is of course a major undertaking but we’re ready for it,” Sharipov stressed today, adding that “for a cosmonaut, the longer the flight the better”. [Passage omitted]