Russia suggests sending space station crews up for a whole year

Excerpt from report by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS

Moscow, 30 March: Expedition 10 to the International Space Station could spend a year in orbit, an official spokesman for the Federal Space Agency [FSA], Sergey Gorbunov, told ITAR-TASS today.

“We have suggested to NASA extending the main expeditions’ tour of duty from six months to a whole year,” he said. “If NASA agrees, then Expedition 10, which is due to go up in October, will start preparing for a year-long tour of duty.”

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”, 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.

According to Gorbunov, “the line-up of Expedition 10 and its programme of works in space have yet to be confirmed”. “One thing’s for sure, though – the third seat in the Soyuz-TMA [booster rocket] won’t go unfilled,” Gorbunov stressed. It will probably be taken by a European Space Agency astronaut. “Talks with the ESA are in hand but we don’t yet have a definite candidate for a visiting crew,” Gorbunov said. [Passage omitted]