Space station crew to be cut to two

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Feb. 27 (UPI) -- With the shuttle fleet grounded for the foreseeable future, NASA and its partners plan to pare down the number of people living aboard the International Space Station outpost from three to two and use Russian Soyuz spacecraft for crew transports, NASA's administrator said Thursday.

The current station crew, who had been scheduled to return to Earth next month aboard the shuttle Atlantis, now are expected to remain in orbit until late April or early May. The so-called Expedition Six crew, consisting of commander Ken Bowersox, science officer Don Pettit and flight engineer Nikolai Budarin, is to be replaced by a two-man crew that has yet to be named.

NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said the decision was made to fly an American and a Russian, but officials declined to identify the crew. Already assigned to the Expedition Seven crew were NASA's Ed Lu and cosmonauts Yuri Malenchenko and Alexander Kaleri.

Russia also was training two cosmonauts and a European Space Agency astronaut for a weeklong Soyuz taxi mission. These biannual missions are needed to replace the space station's lifeboat. O'Keefe said the new plan, which is viable for about 18 months, replaces crew exchange missions for the taxi flights.

Russia's compensation for the missions was not disclosed. Russia had been selling one of the three slots available on the Soyuz taxi missions to the European Space Agency, which flies astronauts to conduct research, or to fare-paying tourists.

"All the partners are acting like partners in the development of a partnership solution," O'Keefe told members of a joint congressional hearing.

O'Keefe also said the partners had jointly agreed to accelerate flights of unmanned Russian cargo ships to keep the station crew supplied with water, food, fuel and other critical equipment during what could be an extended hiatus of shuttle missions to the space station.

"It's not optimum," admitted O'Keefe.

In response to questions, O'Keefe said the partners always have the option of leaving the station without a crew and estimates the outpost could safely stay mothballed for six months to a year.

NASA is barred from directly purchasing spacecraft from Russia under the Iran Non-Proliferation Act of 2000. However, U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Texas, said he planned to introduce legislation to amend the act so the United States can buy Russian spacecraft to keep the station operational.

"I believe we need to ensure the space station remains operational while the shuttle fleet is grounded," Lampson said.

Shuttle flights were put on hold pending the investigation into the breakup of shuttle Columbia on Feb. 1 as it returned toward a Florida landing. All seven astronauts perished.