(APW_ENG_19951025.0519)
1) The commander of the space shuttle Columbia threw out the ceremonial first pitch for the fifth game of the World Series Wednesday, one day early.
2) The videotape, beamed down from the space shuttle Wednesday morning, is supposed to be broadcast at the beginning of Game 5 on Thursday night in Cleveland.
3) It took commander Kenneth Bowersox and his crew seven times to get the brief videotaped segment right.
4) ``We've been on orbit since last Friday conducting science experiments as part of the United States microgravity laboratory,'' Bowersox said, again and again. ``But tonight, our thoughts are with the national pastime. To the Braves and to the Indians, good luck in Game 5 of the World Series. Now let's play ball!''
5) With that, Bowersox tossed a baseball toward the camera. It floated back.
6) ``Great knuckleballs,'' Mission Control said. ``We think we'll have endorsement contracts for all of you when you get back.''
7) ``We're ready to go professional,'' Bowersox replied. ``The fastest slowball in the world.''


Space Station Closer To Getting Crew
(APW_ENG_20001029.0284)
1) The Russian rocket that will carry up the first residents of the international space station emerged from its hangar Sunday and, enveloped by the pre-dawn desert fog, was hauled by rail to its launch pad.
2) The Soyuz rocket is American astronaut Bill Shepherd's ticket to the new space station. He's scheduled to depart on his four-month mission from Baikonur Cosmodrome on Tuesday, along with Russian cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev.
3) Shepherd and his crew did not come out to watch their rocket's half-hour train ride across the barren steppes of this Central Asian spaceport 1,300 miles southeast of Moscow. Shepherd's wife was there, though, to videotape the event.
4) ``It's hard to believe that we're here,'' said Beth Stringham-Shepherd. ``We've waited soooo long.''
5) On Tuesday, Shepherd, a 51-year-old Navy captain, will become only the second American to ride a Russian rocket to orbit. Two days later, he is scheduled to arrive at the international space station and become its first commander.
6) He's been training _ and waiting _ for this moment for almost five years. Russia's delays in building and then launching the space station's living quarters held everything up for more than two years.
7) ``He's like, 'Let's just wrap this up and go,' '' his wife said with a laugh.
8) By the time the space station is completed in 2006, it should be a first-class laboratory staffed by crews of up to seven. NASA envisions another full decade of operation beyond that.
9) On Sunday, the green, white and orange rocket, 168 feet from tip to tip, was transported horizontally atop a train car pulled by a diesel engine. Its destination was just 1 1/2 miles away _ the launch pad where the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik, took off in 1957 and where the world's first spaceman, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, departed in 1961.
10) Pictures and images of Sputnik and Gagarin are everywhere in this once super-secret, 45-year-old cosmodrome run by Russia: in lobbies, on gates, on road signs, on monuments. Cosmodrome officials are quick to remind visiting Americans of their country's many space feats, including the world's longest-running space station, Russia's beloved but abandoned Mir, launched nearly 15 years ago.
11) Lt. Gen. Valery Grin, who leads commissions on both space stations, said the new orbiting outpost is ``an investment in the future.'' But, he added: ``I'm sorry we have to put Mir down. Only a miracle could save Mir.''
12) A few hundred people gathered in the chill to watch Shepherd's Soyuz rocket be hoisted onto the pad. The crowd was diverse: Russian military officers mingling with Russian hardhats, NASA employees and journalists from all over the world.
13) American astronaut Kenneth Bowersox took in the scene with delight.
14) ``We were starting to wonder there for a while'' whether the space station would ever pick up steam, said Bowersox, Shepherd's backup.
15) He noted that NASA and the Russian Space Agency worked hard on the shuttle-Mir program, which sent seven Americans to live on Mir. Astronaut Norman Thagard was first, launched aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket in March 1995.
16) ``Now, things get really serious,'' Bowersox said. ``We're going to have Russians and Americans and later Europeans, Japanese, Canadians along with them, living together in space and we have to support them. So no matter what our differences are, we have to work together.''
17) Back in Houston, home to NASA's Mission Control, the feeling is almost reverent as flight controllers prepare for what they hope will be uninterrupted space station occupancy. Flight director John Curry told reporters last week he hopes Tuesday's launch will begin a new era for man in space.
18) ``I'd say there's a decent chance that October 30th may, in fact, be the last day we don't have humans in space,'' he said.


NASA Improves With Computer Problems
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1) NASA engineers slowly made progress with computer problems aboard the international space station on Saturday while a Russian Soyuz rocket carrying the world's first paying space tourist streaked toward the 240-mile-high outpost.
2) NASA hoped to have the computers working in time for space shuttle Endeavour to undock from the station Sunday to avoid an orbital traffic jam when the Soyuz arrives on Monday.
3) If the problems persist, Russian space officials have agreed to keep the Soyuz in a holding pattern, possibly until Tuesday.
4) ``They won't dock with the shuttle there. There's no doubt about this,'' said NASA representative Michael Baker, who watched the Soyuz lift off Saturday from Baikonur, Kazakstan.
5) The problematic command-and-control computers are critical to operating the station's new billion-dollar robot arm. The arm is stalled with its launching crate clenched it its hand; NASA wants that crate to be put back aboard Endeavour for the ride home.
6) Early Saturday, the main computer was working, even though it experienced a glitch, and flight controllers succeeded in activating one of the two backup computers.
7) ``It is definitely a step in the right direction,'' Mission Control radioed. ``We're not finished with all our steps. But things are looking good.''
8) The second backup, believed to have a failed hard drive, was replaced by a spare computer at the station, and flight controllers were still working on it.
9) The computer failures have delayed plans for the new arm to hand off its 3,000-pound packing crate to a smaller arm attached to the shuttle. Mission Control hoped to complete the handoff Saturday if at least two computers were working.
10) Other tests of the new arm were scrapped with time running out.
11) ``We're still trying to find the smoking gun in what caused our initial set of problems, and until we get that smoking gun identified, we're going to take things slow and easy and not do any operations that aren't 100 percent mandatory for a safe operation of the station,'' said Wayne Hale, a Mission Control representative.
12) U.S. astronaut Susan Helms, aboard the station for a 4 1/2-month stay with Russian commander Yuri Usachev and U.S. astronaut Jim Voss, said the problem computers do not affect other station computers or operations.
13) The shuttle and the Soyuz could both dock at the station, but if the Soyuz were to dock while the shuttle was there, it would come within 20 feet of it. Flight director Phil Engelauf called that ``uncomfortably close,'' given potential for radio interference and thruster contamination.
14) Russia said it was unwilling to postpone the Soyuz mission, as NASA had requested, because it needs to replace the space station's escape craft by the end of the month. The Soyuz craft carrying the two cosmonauts and California millionaire Dennis Tito will serve as the new lifeboat and the three will return on the older ship.


Tourist Arrives at Space Station
(APW_ENG_20010430.0250)
1) A Russian spacecraft carrying California millionaire Dennis Tito pulled up to the international space station on Monday, within hours of space shuttle Endeavour's departure.
2) The Soyuz capsule docked just before 4 a.m., ending a two-day journey that began in Kazakstan.
3) NASA broadcast the 245-mile-high linkup, using the gray and grainy images provided by Russian Mission Control. The Soyuz _ Tito's taxi _ made its slow approach with Russian cosmonaut Talgat Musabayev at the controls.
4) The Soyuz's arrival marked the beginning of six days of anxious monitoring by NASA, who opposed Tito's visit for months on safety grounds and finally capitulated last week.
5) Space station Alpha's three residents were under orders to conduct safety briefings and emergency drills as soon as the hatches opened. NASA cleared the station crew's schedule for the rest of this week to allow time for ``entertaining,'' as one NASA manager described it over the weekend.
6) Tito is paying as much as $20 million for this adventure of a lifetime. All the money is going to the Russian space program; neither NASA nor any of the other space station partners get a cut.


Shades of Apollo 13: Two astronauts bumped from flight for medical reasons
(APW_ENG_20021109.0311)
1) It was bad enough when a medical problem sidelined one astronaut, but then a back injury forced another off space shuttle Endeavour's upcoming flight, sending shock waves through the crew.
2) Not since Apollo 13 had a career astronaut, let alone two, been bumped from an impending U.S. space shot because of health concerns.
3) ``We were joking a lot about being Number 113,'' said Kenneth Bowersox, who at last check was still fit for Monday's launch and a lengthy space station stay. He suggested, during lighter moments, changing the mission's STS-113 designation.
4) For the record, Endeavour's flight to the international space station remains Space Transportation System No. 113. The mission patch plays it safe, though, and goes with Roman numerals: CXIII.
5) Seven astronauts will be aboard Endeavour, including eleventh-hour fill-ins Donald Pettit and Paul Lockhart.
6) Pettit will spend the winter aboard the space station with Bowersox and Russian Nikolai Budarin. Lockhart, Endeavour's pilot, will deliver them and bring back the three who have been living on the orbiting complex since June.
7) Pettit and Lockhart were upgraded over the summer. For Apollo 13, the countdown was already under way in 1970 when the switch in command module pilots occurred. Thomas ``Ken'' Mattingly was exposed to German measles and replaced by Jack Swigert on what was to become an even more star-crossed mission.
8) Pettit was training in Russia as the space station backup for Donald Thomas when Bowersox broke the news in July: Pettit was in and Thomas was out. NASA's medical experts had been debating for months whether Thomas should be grounded because of an undisclosed issue and finally ordered that the two Donalds be swapped.
9) ``It was one of those things that was right on the line,'' said Bowersox, the expedition commander. ``I had trouble sleeping before it happened because I was so worried about which way we should go and what was right and what was wrong and the best way to handle it.''
10) A couple weeks later, in August, shuttle pilot Christopher ``Gus'' Loria became the second casualty after hurting his back at home. Because Lockhart had just flown to the space station on Endeavour in June, NASA asked him to step in.
11) Lockhart told his flabbergasted wife, who had been planning their vacation: ``There's no need to finish getting the passports. We're not going to Germany and Austria.''
12) For Bowersox, the pilot swap was ``an even bigger shock'' than having Pettit suddenly on board. Bowersox and his station crew were still in Russia and had no clue anything was amiss.
13) Pettit and his wife, meanwhile, were stunned by their own turn of events _ although perhaps less so since he had been training all along as a backup. But the impact on their lives was greater since Pettit was departing on a four-month station mission, rather than an 11-day shuttle flight. For starters, he was going to miss his twin boys' second birthday.
14) Worse yet, NASA already had delivered the meals and clothes for the upcoming space station crew, leaving Pettit stuck with Thomas' selections.
15) Thomas filled his advance shipments with chocolate, but no coffee. Pettit needs two cups of Java a day and craves green chili, not chocolate. So he's stashed instant coffee and northern New Mexico's finest green chili aboard Endeavour.
16) Because Pettit is taller than Thomas, he's taking up some pants along with bigger size-13 shoes. The shirts already on the space station should more or less fit. At least the name ``Don'' on the shirts is a perfect match. _ _ _ =
17) On the Net:
18) NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov


NASA calls off Endeavour's launch because of oxygen leak
(APW_ENG_20021110.0444)
1) With just two hours remaining in the countdown, NASA called off the launch of space shuttle Endeavour because of an oxygen leak.
2) The seven astronauts had already begun boarding the spaceship Sunday when mission managers delayed the flight by at least one day, possibly much longer. A small leak had cropped up in the system that provides breathing oxygen for the crew during launch and landing, and engineers feared it could worsen.
3) Commander James Wetherbee had just strapped in.
4) ``I'd like to welcome you aboard, Wex, but tonight's not our night,'' test director Steve Altemus said. He informed Wetherbee that there was no immediate word on when NASA might try again.
5) ``I know you guys are going to be disappointed, but I think we want to give you a healthy vehicle before we cut you loose from the Cape here,'' the controller said.
6) Wetherbee replied: ``Absolutely.''
7) Earlier Sunday, NASA had loaded hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel into the shuttle for a middle-of-the-night delivery run to the international space station. Launch had been scheduled for 12:58 a.m. (0558 GMT) Monday.
8) Once it takes off, Endeavour will carry up a fresh three-man crew to replace the current space station occupants, who have been on board since June and should have been back by now. The shuttle also holds a $390 million girder that will be installed on the station by a spacewalking team.
9) It will be NASA's second shuttle flight in as many months and, in many ways, is a replica. An almost identical 14-ton beam was attached to the orbiting outpost in October; this one will be hooked to the opposite side of the long aluminum framework.
10) The one American and two Russian space station residents marked their 158th day in orbit Sunday. On Saturday, they said goodbye to three cosmonauts who dropped off a new Russian lifeboat and returned to Earth in the old one.
11) Peggy Whitson, the space station's science officer, and her two male crewmates were supposed to come home last month, but their mission was extended because of the summerlong grounding of the shuttle fleet.
12) For Whitson, one of the toughest adjustments to space life was the food; the menu repeats every eight days and consists almost entirely of canned or rehydrated cuisine. She said she's looking forward to rich foods and lots of sauces once Endeavour brings her back to Earth.
13) Replacing Whitson and her crewmates will be Americans Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit and Russian Nikolai Budarin. Pettit, originally an understudy, was assigned to the four-month mission over the summer when the prime science officer was grounded by doctors because of an undisclosed medical issue.
14) Endeavour's crew also includes John Herrington, the first American Indian astronaut and part of the Chickasaw Nation. About 200 members of the tribe were on hand for his launch.
15) By the time Endeavour's 11-day flight is over, NASA will have hauled up 90,000 pounds (40,500 kilograms) of space station equipment this year, said shuttle program manager Ron Dittemore. Shuttle crews also will have conducted 18 spacewalks in 2002, the most for a single year. _ _ _ =
16) On the Net:
17) NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov


NASA delays Endeavour's launch because of bad weather at emergency landing sites in Spain
(APW_ENG_20021122.0654)
1) The same storm system that sank an oil tanker off the coast of Spain has grounded space shuttle Endeavour.
2) NASA halted the countdown at the nine-minute mark Friday after it became apparent that the weather would not improve at either of the two emergency landing strips in Spain. Conditions were ideal in Florida with a picture-perfect, nearly full moon shining over the launch pad.
3) Launch managers said they would try again Saturday night, despite forecasts calling for more rain, wind, thick clouds and turbulence across the Atlantic.
4) ``Appreciate the effort tonight,'' launch director Mike Leinbach told the seven astronauts and his team. ``But we're just not going to make it tonight.''
5) It was the latest delay for a space station mission that already is nearly two weeks late because of an oxygen leak and a damaged robot arm.
6) In 21 years of space shuttle flight, NASA has had to postpone launches only a few times because of bad weather at the overseas landing sites. The two military air bases in Spain would be used only if the shuttle developed engine trouble or some other emergency in the minutes following liftoff.
7) Endeavour should have departed for the international space station on Nov. 11, but an oxygen leak cropped up with just two hours remaining in the countdown.
8) The leak was traced to a cracked hose in the astronauts' oxygen supply system. During the repairs, technicians accidentally rammed scaffolding into the shuttle's robot arm, causing minor damage. Engineering analysis found the arm to be safe to use.
9) The arm will be used to lift a 14-ton girder from the shuttle's payload bay for installation on the space station. Two of Endeavour's crew will go out on three spacewalks to hook up the structure.
10) One of the designated spacewalkers, John Herrington, will become the first American Indian in space. About 200 members of his tribe, the Chickasaw Nation, traveled to Cape Canaveral for the previous launch attempt, but could not return and held a ceremony back home in Ada, Oklahoma, on Friday night.
11) Besides the $390 million girder, Endeavour will deliver a fresh three-man crew to the space station. The current residents have been on board since June.
12) One of the astronauts who will be moving in, Donald Pettit, was assigned to the mission just four months ago. He was originally the backup for Donald Thomas. But on Friday, NASA said Thomas was removed from the flight because of concerns about the amount of radiation he would have received.
13) ``It was an assessment of the radiation exposure he would have gotten on a long-duration mission,'' said NASA spokesman Doug Peterson. Peterson said such assessments are based on the individual, his spaceflight experience and his personal background.
14) Thomas has flown four times in space for a total of 43 days. Astronaut Kenneth Bowersox has logged 50 days over four previous space flights but was not pulled from the mission. And their Russian crewmate, Nikolai Budarin, has spent 9{ months in space, aboard his country's old Mir space station.
15) Cosmic radiation has always been a major medical concern facing astronauts who spend prolonged periods in space, as it can raise the risk of cancer and other illnesses. It is believed to be one of the limiting factors for a mission to Mars.
16) Pettit, Bowersox and Budarin will remain on the space station for at least four months. They will replace astronaut Peggy Whitson and cosmonauts Valery Korzun and Sergei Treschev, who marked their 170th day in orbit Friday. _ _ _ =
17) On the Net:
18) NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov


Time well spent: Space station's next residents say they benefited from launch delays
(APW_ENG_20021125.0028)
1) The three men who will move into the international space station for the winter say they benefited from all of space shuttle Endeavour's launch delays.
2) The extra time allowed them to get more sleep and hit the gym.
3) The two weeks of postponements also pushed the shuttle flight into normal daylight working hours and out of the deep graveyard shift.
4) ``Physically, the delays helped us,'' said Kenneth Bowersox, the astronaut who will take over as the next space station commander.
5) Bowersox and the six others aboard Endeavour were expected to arrive at the space station Monday afternoon, ending a two-day chase. Astronaut Donald Pettit and Russian Nikolai Budarin will join Bowersox on the station.
6) After training for five years for a four-month space station stint, Bowersox said it was hard to believe he was finally on his way.
7) ``I can't wait,'' he said in an interview with The Associated Press on Sunday night. ``I've seen two or three sunrises during the last couple days and I can't believe how many more I've got ahead of me. But I think every day is going to be precious up here.''
8) Bowersox will replace Russian cosmonaut Valery Korzun as the space station's skipper.
9) Korzun and his crew, American Peggy Whitson and Russian Sergei Treschev, have been living on the space station for almost six months, although the mission was to have lasted just 4{ months.
10) Endeavour should have flown in October, but was grounded because of cracked fuel lines found throughout the shuttle fleet. Then Endeavour ran into other trouble that delayed liftoff another two weeks.
11) Pettit took advantage of the last two weeks of delays to eat _ and eat.
12) ``It gave me an opportunity to try to put on a few pounds before flight,'' Pettit said. ``So I did a lot of eating. And then I did a lot more sleep after that. And then, of course, we have to go to the gym.''
13) Bowersox said being in orbit over the holidays may intensify the space station experience, at least for him.
14) NASA made sure turkey breasts were aboard Endeavour for the Thanksgiving holiday. As for Christmas, Bowersox noted: ``I can't think of a whole lot better place to spend Christmas than up in Earth orbit looking down, trying to find Santa Claus.'' He has three young sons.
15) Pettit's twin sons will turn 2 this Friday. Because they are so young, ``it's going to be kind of hard staying in touch with them,'' he said. ``It's going to be sort of like I fell off the planet.''
16) Budarin, their cosmonaut crewmate, also has two sons but they're both grown.
17) Earlier Sunday, the astronauts gave Endeavour's robot arm a workout. The job took on added significance because of the damage that workers inflicted two weeks ago during oxygen-leak repairs; they accidentally hit the arm with scaffolding.
18) Despite the 2-inch (5-centimeter) bruise near the shoulder of the 50-foot (15-meter) crane, it operated fine in orbit, although a wrist joint was sluggish. Mission Control said recently applied lubricant may not have had a chance yet to work its way into that joint.
19) The arm will be used Tuesday to lift a giant girder from the shuttle payload bay for installation on the space station. _ _ _ =
20) On the Net:
21) NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov


Astronauts attach another pricey new piece of latticework to space station
(APW_ENG_20021126.0459)
1) Astronauts attached another pricey new piece of latticework to the international space station Tuesday, setting the stage for the first of three spacewalks needed to finish the job.
2) The astronauts used the robot arms of both shuttle Endeavour and the space station, one at a time, to hoist the $390 million girder as the linked spacecraft zoomed 250 miles (402 kilometers) above Earth.
3) ``You've got a happy control room down here,'' Mission Control radioed.
4) The 14-ton girder, an aluminum beam crammed with wiring and loaded with a rail cart and radiators, was locked into place next to two others. It increased the mass of the entire space station to almost 200 tons.
5) With the latest 45-foot(13.5-meter)-long addition delivered by Endeavour, the framework stretched 134 feet (40 meters). By the time eight more girders are hooked up one after the other over the coming year, this backbone of the space station will exceed the length of a football field and support giant solar wings.
6) Shuttle astronauts Michael Lopez-Alegria and John Herrington waited in their spacewalking suits, ready to venture outside, as commands were sent to drive bolts and secure the girder. Their job was to hook up electrical cables and install clamps to relieve pressure in some of the air-conditioning lines.
7) On Monday, the newest space station residents arrived with drinks and bear hugs for the crew they were replacing, and settled in for a four-month stay.
8) ``Coffee,'' astronaut Donald Pettit announced as he floated into the space station from Endeavour. He carried straws and bags of drinks for the three inhabitants who were about to move out.
9) The one American and two Russians who had been on board since the spring were thrilled to see Endeavour, their ride home.
10) ``You guys look pretty good out there,'' space station astronaut Peggy Whitson radioed as Endeavour made its final approach. The shuttle closed the gap more slowly than usual and docked a half-hour late, prompting Whitson to joke: ``It looks like you guys fly that like you stole it.''
11) The two spacecraft came together high above the South Pacific, ending a round-and-round-the-world chase that began with Endeavour's weekend launch. It marked the close of a six-month stint aboard the space station for Whitson and cosmonauts Valery Korzun and Sergei Treschev.
12) When the three checked into the space station on June 7, they were supposed to leave in October after 4 1/2 months. But shuttle problems extended their stay.
13) Astronaut Kenneth Bowersox, a 46-year-old Navy captain, replaced Korzun as the space station commander. He will remain on board until March, along with Pettit and cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin. Mission Control immediately welcomed them to their new home.
14) The crews embraced one another as soon as the hatches between the two spacecraft swung open. Whitson teased Pettit about his new buzz cut.
15) ``Hey, you got a haircut, dude,'' she said, laughing. ``I'm glad you're here.''
16) Pettit, 47, a newcomer to space and the station's designated science officer, was not supposed to be on this mission. He was originally an understudy, but was upgraded in July after NASA pulled astronaut Donald Thomas off the flight. Doctors were worried about Thomas' exposure to cosmic radiation during a long space voyage. _ _ _ =
17) On the Net:
18) NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov


Astronaut formally takes charge of space station, former skipper sad about leaving 'space house'
(APW_ENG_20021129.0614)
1) An American astronaut formally took charge of the international space station on Friday from a Russian cosmonaut who said he was going to miss his ``space house.''
2) ``We were so happy to live here, to work here,'' Valery Korzun said in a change-of-command ceremony full of naval tradition.
3) Korzun said it was a sad time for him and his two crewmates, who will depart aboard shuttle Endeavour on Monday after a six-month stay. ``We will miss our space house,'' he said, adding that they tried their best to improve it.
4) With that, Korzun told his replacement, Kenneth Bowersox: ``I am ready to be relieved.''
5) Korzun moved into the space station on June 7, along with American Peggy Whitson and Russian Sergei Treschev. They moved out Monday night, shortly after Endeavour arrived with their replacements.
6) ``We really did have a good time,'' Whitson said at a news conference Friday evening. ``I can very easily say without lying in the slightest that it really was a blast being here and I am ready to come back.''
7) A month ago, Whitson wasn't quite ready to leave, but she gradually came around. ``My husband reminded me that it's much better to leave while you still want to stay than the other way around,'' she said.
8) Whitson said she can't wait to eat something that does not come in a bag. She's already put in an order at NASA crew quarters for ``a nice steak with a Caesar salad with tons of garlic in it.'' She's also looking forward to weeding her garden back home in Houston.
9) Bowersox, a Navy captain, said the departing crew set a standard that will be difficult to match. He will remain on board until at least March with American Donald Pettit and Russian Nikolai Budarin. They are the sixth team to occupy the orbiting outpost.
10) ``I only hope that my crew, Don, Nikolai and I, will be able to work as well over the four or however many months we end up living on station, hopefully more than four,'' Bowersox said with a laugh.
11) The commander of the docked shuttle Endeavour, James Wetherbee, issued a challenge to the station's new residents.
12) ``Expedition 6, it is your duty to sail on and disappear over the horizon, but return after discovering new land and make the world a better place,'' said Wetherbee, a Navy captain.
13) One more spacewalk is on tap before Endeavour pulls away Monday. Saturday's outing will be the third and final one for the shuttle crew and will wrap up work on the $390 million space station girder that was delivered and installed earlier in the week. _ _ _ =
14) On the Net:
15) NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov


10 space travelers say goodbye, seal hatches between shuttle and station
(APW_ENG_20021202.0431)
1) The crews of the international space station and shuttle Endeavour embraced and said goodbye Monday, and then sealed the hatches between their linked ships.
2) Endeavour was set to undock later in the afternoon, bringing home one American and two Russians who spent six months on the space station. The shuttle is due to land Wednesday. The replacement crew will remain in orbit until March.
3) ``We promise to take good care of the space station,'' astronaut Donald Pettit told its departing skipper, cosmonaut Valery Korzun.
4) Korzun was the last to leave the space station, his home since June. His crewmates, astronaut Peggy Whitson and cosmonaut Sergei Treschev, were just a few steps ahead of him.
5) Once the three former station occupants and four shuttle crewmen were inside Endeavour, the new commander of the orbiting outpost, astronaut Kenneth Bowersox, called out: ``It's so much quieter here now, Houston. I don't know what the deal is.''
6) Replied Mission Control: ``We're still here with you.''
7) ``That's good to know,'' Bowersox said. ``We'd be really lonely without you guys.''
8) Unlike the first five space station crews, Bowersox, Pettit and Russian Nikolai Budarin will have no visitors during their four-month expedition. The next people they see, up close, will be the shuttle astronauts who come to get them.
9) After three spacewalks in five days, the astronauts enjoyed some time off Sunday. For John Herrington, the first American Indian in space, it provided an opportunity to reflect on what it was like to hurtle around Earth at 28,157 kph (17,500 mph) _ outside his spaceship.
10) He couldn't help but think: ``That's a loooong way down.''
11) Herrington, a member of the Chickasaw Nation, helped NASA get a stalled space station railcar moving again during his final spacewalk of the mission Saturday. In his two earlier outings, he helped install a US$390 million station girder that was delivered by Endeavour.
12) In an interview with Indian Country Today, Herrington said the first time he looked out Endeavour's windows after blasting off Nov. 23, he was amazed at how massive the Earth was _ and how minute the atmosphere. It made him realize ``how insignificant we are in the great scheme of things.''
13) Herrington said he carefully chose a variety of American Indian objects to take into space _ eagle feathers, wooden flutes, arrowheads _ ``that I think represents a lot of the spiritual sense that we all feel.''
14) He wanted to take tobacco, too, but NASA said no. The 44-year-old astronaut, a Navy pilot, said he recognized NASA's ban but noted: ``A lot of folks don't realize that we do use it in a spiritual sense.''
15) In fact, just before launch, Herrington said he and a friend ``smudged'' outside NASA crew quarters, waving smoke from burning leaves onto themselves for purification. _ _ _ =
16) On the Net:
17) NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov


Weather might force further delay of shuttle's return from space station
(APW_ENG_20021205.0392)
1) Bad weather at space shuttle Endeavour's landing site in Florida on Thursday delayed its homecoming for a second day in a row.
2) By Thursday morning, the crosswind was already over the safety limit. In addition, a cold front was headed toward Cape Canaveral and bringing rain and possibly even thunderstorms.
3) Mission Control waited as long as it could before deciding to skip Thursday's two landing tries and postpone the return of the international space station's former crew.
4) ``Unfortunately, we see the weather progressing today much as it was forecast. With that in mind, we are going to call off any deorbit attempts for today,'' Mission Control told the astronauts.
5) Friday's forecast was only a little better.
6) Endeavour can stay in orbit until Sunday, but the shuttle has enough rocket fuel for only four more landing attempts. Flight controllers were looking at ways to save fuel to add a fifth try.
7) The shuttle, which launched on Nov. 23, is the ride back to Earth for U.S. astronaut Peggy Whitson and Russian cosmonauts Valery Korzun and Sergei Treschev, who made up the fifth resident crew on space station Alpha.
8) They spent the past six months aboard the orbiting outpost. Wednesday was their 183rd day in orbit.
9) The shuttle left the space station on Monday, after installing a new girder and dropping off Alpha's new crew of Americans Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit and Russian Nikolai Budarin, who will remain aboard until March. _ _ _
10) On the Net:
11) NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov


Potential medical issue postpones spacewalk outside space station
(APW_ENG_20021210.0448)
1) A potential medical issue with one of the new residents of the international space station has prompted NASA to postpone an upcoming spacewalk.
2) The spacewalk by American astronaut Kenneth Bowersox and Russian cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin had been planned for Thursday, but was put off Monday night until at least January.
3) NASA spokesman Rob Navias said Tuesday that because of medical privacy, he could not identify which spaceman was affected or what the concerns entailed. He said the issue was under evaluation, but that it had ``no mission impact whatsoever.''
4) ``There is no mission impact to anything else that this crew is doing on orbit or to the objectives'' of the expedition, Navias said.
5) The concern came up during routine medical testing aboard the space station. Spacewalking can be grueling work, and astronauts need to be in top form. Nonetheless, the postponement was a rare move for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
6) Navias said the six-hour spacewalk involves additional work on the space station's newly installed girder and can wait another month or more. NASA plans to conduct the excursion before the crew's mission ends.
7) ``There was no rush to conduct this spacewalk, and we decided to delay it,'' Navias said.
8) The two men, along with American astronaut Donald Pettit, moved into the orbiting outpost just two weeks ago. They're supposed to remain on board until March.
9) Only one spacewalk was planned for Bowersox and his crewmates, who were ferried to the space station via shuttle Endeavour. They replaced one American and two Russians who spent six months aloft. _ _ _ =
10) On the Net:
11) NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov


Crew of International Space Station plans New Year's celebration in orbit
(APW_ENG_20021230.0456)
1) The crew of the International Space Station plans to ring in the new year with juice, fish and perhaps a little song, the men told journalists Monday.
2) ``We will sit at the table and drink juice and talk, maybe sing a little,'' U.S. astronaut Kenneth Bowersox told Russian reporters at Mission Control outside of Moscow.
3) Cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin said the conditions of space meant the men would not have all their favorite food for the holiday, but said there would be some traditional Russian dishes.
4) ``Unfortunately, there are no fresh vegetables here, but we have fish aspic and real sturgeon,'' he said.
5) New Year's is the biggest holiday of the year in Russia, and most people celebrate it at home with their families.
6) Bowersox and Budarin, along with American astronaut Donald Pettit, moved into the station last month. They are to remain on board until March.
7) (sk)


Russian doctor says cosmonaut pulled from spacewalk is not ill, cites U.S. concerns about cardiovascular system
(APW_ENG_20030108.0147)
1) Russian space authorities asserted Wednesday that a cosmonaut bumped from a spacewalk by NASA for medical reasons is healthy, saying American concerns about cardiovascular ``peculiarities'' they have known about for years had prompted the U.S. space agency to make the decision.
2) Nikolai Budarin was supposed to join U.S. astronaut Kenneth Bowersox in six-hour spacewalk outside the international space station, originally scheduled for last month. But U.S. flight surgeons opposed Budarin's involvement because of undisclosed medical concerns, and the spacewalk was delayed until next week.
3) ``He has no illness. Budarin is healthy,'' Valery Bogomolov, deputy director of the Institute for Medical and Biological Problems, which runs the medical side of the Russian space program, said in comments broadcast on Russia's TVS television.
4) ``The peculiarities of his cardiovascular system are known to us, he had them on previous flights as well,'' Bogomolov said. But he said the responsibility for spacewalks in American spacesuits lies with NASA.
5) A spokesman for Russia's space agency, Sergei Gorbunov, said that Budarin failed to meet American standards in tests on a stationary bicycle.
6) ``But in any case, this is not considered a health problem,'' he told NTV television.
7) Gorbunov said Russian space officials did not dispute the U.S. decision. However, Igor Goncharov, the deputy chief of mission for medical provision, said Budarin was fit for a spacewalk, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency.
8) ``Budarin has no other health problems, he is working at full strength,'' ITAR-Tass quoted Goncharov as saying. He said Budarin had similar test results during past missions in which he walked in space.
9) Budarin, 49, made eight spacewalks totaling 44 hours during two stints on Russia's former Mir space station, the Interfax news agency reported. The most recent were in the spring of 1998, when he and another cosmonaut made three spacewalks in just one month to replace a thruster.
10) NASA said Tuesday that rookie astronaut Donald Pettit will substitute for Budarin, who is scheduled to remain aboard the station with Pettit and Bowersox until March.
11) (sbg/ji)


Astronauts take spacewalk, including a late substitute who frees the space station's sticky hatch
(APW_ENG_20030115.0695)
1) Two astronauts, one of them a substitute for a medically disqualified cosmonaut, floated outside the international space station Wednesday for a bit of maintenance work.
2) Donald Pettit originally was supposed to monitor the spacewalk from inside. But in an unusual move, NASA yanked his Russian crew mate, Nikolai Budarin, from the job last month and bumped Pettit up to spacewalking status last week.
3) A sticky hatch delayed the spacewalk and added to the tension.
4) The space station's commander, Kenneth Bowersox, could not open the exit hatch at first. The handle seemed to jam, as though it was pushing against hard rubber.
5) ``I'm not really making any progress here,'' he reported after about 20 minutes.
6) Pettit, a rookie astronaut, gave it a shot next. He pulled up on the hatch ever so slightly while turning the crank, and the hatch popped free.
7) ``I have to do that to get the door of my pickup truck open sometime,'' Pettit said.
8) Pettit _ dubbed ``Mister Magic Fingers'' by Bowersox for his success with the hatch _ discovered that the outer thermal cover had a badly creased strap. Bowersox cut off the strap right before ending the seven-hour spacewalk to prevent the hatch mechanism from hanging up again.
9) The astronauts _ both first-time spacewalkers _ quickly completed their two main tasks outside, 250 miles (402 kilometers) up. They released locks on a recently installed radiator that was then extended to its full 75 feet (23 meters) in length. They also used tape to clean black grit from a docking ring; the sandy debris was carried up by a cargo carrier last year and apparently resulted from sandblasting at NASA's launch pad.
10) However, a protruding pin prevented them from erecting a light on a boom, which would not swing out of its stowed position.
11) Not only was Pettit a late substitute for this spacewalk, he was a late substitute for the flight itself. He was the backup for an astronaut who was pulled from the space station mission last summer because of doctors' concerns about radiation.
12) ``He wasn't even supposed to fly, so I think he probably just continues to shake his head and wonders what's next,'' said Daryl Schuck, the spacewalk officer in Mission Control.
13) U.S. flight surgeons opposed a spacewalk by Budarin because of medical concerns. NASA would not elaborate, but Russian space officials said the 49-year-old cosmonaut had cardiovascular ``peculiarities'' that were well known and they insisted he was healthy enough to conduct a spacewalk.
14) NASA prevailed, however, because it was in charge of the spacewalk.
15) The astronauts called out to Budarin and thanked him for his help during the spacewalk. ``It's very beautiful. We're doing what you did for eight times,'' Bowersox said, referring to Budarin's eight spacewalks at Russia's former space station Mir.
16) ``Good luck. Be careful, my friends,'' Budarin replied.
17) The three men are about halfway through their four-month space station mission. _ _ _ =
18) On the Net:
19) NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov


Space shuttle Columbia and space station crews keep eye on each other from afar
(APW_ENG_20030128.0174)
1) Although they are not set to rendezvous, the crews of space shuttle Columbia and the international space station are keeping tabs on each other as they both orbit Earth.
2) ``It's been great to hear all the good science you're doing,'' space station commander Kenneth Bowersox radioed Monday to the crew of Columbia, which is in the middle of a 16-day science mission.
3) At the time of the call, Columbia was flying over Brazil and space station Alpha was over Ukraine.
4) Shuttle astronaut Laurel Clark asked station crew member Donald Pettit how his twin 2-year-old sons were doing.
5) ``I'm doing the best job I can to maintain contact with them as they go through the terrible twos,'' said Pettit, who has been aboard Alpha with two crewmates since late November.
6) Pettit was informed that shuttle pilot William McCool had e-mailed him his next move in their long-distance chess game.
7) ``It's my move,'' Pettit said. ``Tell him 'en garde.'''
8) The shuttle crew spent most of Monday continuing its scientific research. The start of one experiment, examining how fine water mists can be used to fight fires, was delayed while a leak in some of the equipment used with a combustion chamber was sealed.
9) The temperature in Columbia's lab was back to a comfortable level in the mid-70s Fahrenheit (around 24 Celsius) after problems associated with the breakdown of a pair of dehumidifiers was mostly fixed over the weekend, flight director Phil Engelauf said. The problems had caused the temperature to rise to near 80 degrees F (26 degrees C).
10) Columbia's crew also took time Monday to wish NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe a happy 47th birthday and to watch Super Bowl highlights.
11) The shuttle is scheduled to return to Earth on Saturday. _ _ _ =
12) On the Net:
13) NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov


International space station crew retrievable even with shuttles grounded
(APW_ENG_20030201.0312)
1) Even with its shuttles grounded, NASA can easily retrieve the astronauts aboard the international space station using Russian vehicles.
2) But if the space agency's remaining shuttles are out of service for an extended period in the wake of Saturday's catastrophe, as seems likely, it will prove difficult to maintain the station's operations.
3) If necessary, a Russian Soyuz vehicle attached to the space station could bring the three astronauts onboard back to Earth at a moment's notice.
4) But with Russia's ability to launch vehicles to the space station already compromised by budget problems, Saturday's accident could seriously jeopardize the continued operation of the outpost.
5) With no permanent crew aboard, the space station can operate in a ``dormant'' mode as long as occasional maintenance is performed by visiting astronauts. In fact, NASA had already been considering a ``demanning'' contingency for 2003 before Saturday's events.
6) But the longer the station went unoccupied, the greater the chances that it would deteriorate to an uninhabitable state. A dormant period would also cause a significant interruption in the station's continuing assembly and scientific research program.
7) Expedition Six, as the current crew is called, arrived at the station in November and is scheduled to return to in March. The crew consists of NASA astronauts Ken Bowersox and Don Pettit and Russian Soyuz commander Nikolai Budarin.
8) The shuttle mission that tragically ended Saturday over eastern Texas did not visit the space station. But the crews of the two spacecraft did speak by telephone on Jan. 28, the anniversary of the Challenger disaster that killed seven astronauts 17 years ago.
9) An unmanned supply vessel was to be launched Sunday from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome. It was scheduled to arrive at the orbiting station Tuesday.


Russia sending cargo ship to international space station after shuttle disaster
(APW_ENG_20030202.0294)
1) Russia launched an unmanned cargo ship on a flight to the international space station Sunday, a day after the loss of the space shuttle Columbia threw future missions to the orbiting complex in doubt.
2) The Progress M-47 lifted off atop a Soyuz-U rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 3:59 p.m. Moscow time (1259 GMT) and successfully entered orbit a few minutes later, said Nikolai Kryuchkov, a spokesman at Russia's mission control center outside Moscow. The craft is scheduled to dock with the station Tuesday, delivering fuel, equipment and food and mail for the crew.
3) The long-planned launch came as stunned Russian space officials offered condolences to their American colleagues and said the disaster may put Moscow's cash-strapped space program under more pressure to deliver crews and supplies to the station.
4) ``This is a big tragedy for us,'' said Vladimir Solovyov, head of Russia's mission control center. ``We knew every member of the Columbia crew personally except for the Israeli astronaut.''
5) Cosmonaut Yuri Usachev, who commanded the space station's second crew in 2001, said he and his colleagues were feeling the tragedy as a ``personal loss.''
6) ``I believe yesterday's tragedy will have a big influence on the future of the international space station,'' he told TVS television. ``Probably for a certain amount of time the accent will shift to Russian systems of delivery of cargo and crews.''
7) NASA plans had called for expanding the international space station, or ISS, during five shuttle flights this year, but space shuttle program manager Ron Dittemore said Saturday that flights would be put on hold until officials determine what caused the Columbia to break up.
8) Russian space officials have said they are ready to pick up some of the slack in the meantime with their own spacecraft, including manned Soyuz TMA capsules, but that more would need to be built and funds are scarce.
9) ``Of course we are all counting on space shuttles being used for both ferrying the crews to the ISS and delivery of fuel and other supplies to the station,'' said Valery Ryumin, a former cosmonaut and deputy director of the Energiya space engineering firm. ``The way things stand now, these tasks can be handled by our Soyuz and Progress spacecrafts, but we would need money'' to build new ones, he said.
10) Russia builds two of the spacecraft per year, said Sergei Gorbunov, spokesman for the Russian space agency Rosaviakosmos, according to the Interfax news agency. Russia now has two Soyuz craft _ which, unlike the shuttles, cannot be used more than once, news reports said.
11) Russia normally sends a Soyuz up to the station twice a year as a fresh escape capsule, with its Russian-led crew making a short visit and returning to Earth in the old craft.
12) James Newman, a former astronaut and head of NASA's coordinating office in Russia, said the Soyuz has a good track record.
13) ``It is extremely safe. The Soyuz has a long and proud record of successful crew return,'' Newman said, adding that the current ISS crew of two U.S. astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut can use the Soyuz currently attached to the station as an escape capsule.
14) ``They are always ready should there be a technical problem, any sort of emergency on the space station to use the Soyuz as a lifeboat,'' he said.
15) Gorbunov said Sunday that the next such Soyuz mission, planned for April, might be sent up unmanned to avoid depleting the food supply for the station's permanent crew, Interfax reported.
16) Shuttles can carry payloads of 100 metric tons (110 short tons), while Russian Progress supply ships like the one launched Sunday can carry no more than 5 metric tons (5.5 short tons), Interfax reported.
17) After dumping its Mir space station in 2001, the Russian space program has concentrated its meager resources on the 16-nation international space station. Russia has earned money by taking paying ``space tourists'' to the station.
18) Russian Foreign Minster Igor Ivanov called U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Israeli Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday to express condolences, the Foreign Ministry said Sunday. Outside the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, a few Russians placed brightly colored flowers on a snowbank Sunday morning.
19) (sbg/ee)


Space station crew grieving but still proud of their own mission after being told of Columbia disaster
(APW_ENG_20030202.0521)
1) The three-man crew at the International Space Station was grieving but still proud to be on its mission after being told about the Columbia disaster by a NASA official.
2) Bob Cabana, director of flight crew operations, said he told the crew of two Americans and one Russian about the accident roughly 24 hours after Columbia disintegrated 39 miles (63 kilometers) over Texas.
3) ``They're grieving up there, also. And they feel a little isolated. We're keeping them fully informed,'' Cabana said.
4) The latest crew _ NASA astronauts Ken Bowersox and Don Pettit and Russian Soyuz commander Nikolai Budarin _ arrived at the space station in November and is scheduled to return to Earth in March.
5) ``They want to get through this process. And it's harder for them being detached from it in space,'' Cabana said. ``But all I can tell you is they're in tremendous spirits. They're proud to be where they are.''
6) He also said Bowersox, Pettit and Budarin were glad to hear about the successful launch of a supply ship, and are looking forward to its arrival Tuesday morning at the space station.
7) The unmanned Russian cargo ship launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Sunday. It is delivering fuel, equipment, food and mail for the trio.
8) Cabana said he assured Bowersox that he would tell the crew anything learned from the Columbia investigation. He also shared stories about Columbia's crew.
9) ``I talked about better memories, about (an) on-orbit video conference I had with them and how happy they were to be there, and how much it meant to them to be contributing on this mission. And those are the memories I'm always going to cherish,'' Cabana said.


URGENT Russian supply ship docks with international space station
(APW_ENG_20030204.0282)
1) KOROLYOV, Russia: shuttle Columbia.
2) Maneuvering on autopilot, the unmanned Progress M-47 cargo ship moored itself to the station at 5:49 p.m. Moscow time (1449 GMT). It lifted off atop a Soyuz-U rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Sunday.
3) Russian officials said the docking went smoothly.
4) The Progress brought about 2.5 metric tons (2.75 tons) of fuel as well as water, food and other supplies for U.S. astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit and Russian cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin.
5) MORE


Russian cargo ship boosts international space station's orbit
(APW_ENG_20030211.0226)
1) A Russian cargo ship fired its thrusters to push the international space station to a higher orbit Tuesday, while U.S. and Russian space officials pondered over ways to run the orbiting outpost with space shuttles grounded following the loss of the Columbia.
2) The Progress M-47 cargo ship raised the station's orbit by 10.5 kilometers (6.5 miles) to about 396 kilometers (246 miles), said Russian Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin.
3) In the past, both Russian supply ships and U.S. shuttles have regularly adjusted the station's orbit, which gradually decreases under the impact of the earth's gravity.
4) But with shuttle missions suspended during the investigation into the Columbia disaster, the Russian ships have become the sole link to the outpost. The Progress M-47 hooked up to the ISS a week ago, bringing fuel, food, water and other supplies for U.S. astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit and Russian cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin.
5) Russian space officials said that Russia was ready to build extra Soyuz crew capsules and Progress cargo ships necessary to service the station during a break in shuttle flights, provided that the United States and other partners in the 16-nation project cover the costs.
6) Russia has budgeted the equivalent of US$130 million to fulfill its obligation to send two Soyuz and three Progress ships to the orbital outpost this year. A Progress costs the equivalent of US$22 million.
7) Russian Aerospace Agency Director Yuri Koptev said that at least one extra Progress would be needed this year to run the station without shuttles, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported Tuesday. Russia can build it, but wants ``the costs be distributed among other participants in the project,'' it quoted Koptev as saying.
8) However, James Newman, NASA's coordinator in Russia, said Tuesday that NASA cannot now purchase any extra Russian ships because of U.S. legislation prohibiting such practice in connection to Russia's cooperation with Iran. ``Right now there is no relief for NASA from that, so I would imagine that our negotiations will continue,'' he said.
9) The Iran Nonproliferation Act of 2000 bars ``extraordinary payments'' to Russia's space agency for the station unless the United States confirms Russia has not transferred missile technology or weapons of mass destruction to Iran in the previous year. Russia denies its cooperation with Tehran, which includes construction of a nuclear reactor, can advance Iranian nuclear weapons or missile programs.
10) ``The INA is still in effect, so I think that the right people are looking at that and trying to understand what they can do,'' Newman said.
11) He said NASA and the Russians are working closely ``to understand what we can do with the Progress and Soyuz flights that are already scheduled.''
12) Russian space officials said last week that a Soyuz would carry a replacement crew to the station in late April, but NASA said it hasn't been decided how or when the current crew would return home.
13) ``People are trying to understand what can we do for the space station if the shuttle isn't available for a certain length of time,'' Newman said. ``Will the station have zero people, two people, three people? Right now we just don't know.''
14) He warned that leaving the station temporarily unoccupied could jeopardize it.
15) ``People can fix a lot of things if they are there to do it,'' said Newman, a former astronaut who has been on four shuttle missions. ``You want to inhabit your house to keep it fixed and operating well. The same thing is obviously true for the space station.''
16) (vi/sbg)


Men on space station say they've wept for their Columbia friends, ``but it's time to move forward'' With BC-NA-GEN--US-Shuttle Investigation
(APW_ENG_20030211.0330)
1) The three men living on the international space station said Tuesday they've shed tears for their friends who died aboard Columbia but are now trying to move forward _ though slowly.
2) In their first public comments on the shuttle disaster, the three crew members also said their emotions seem to be amplified in orbit because of the sense of solitude.
3) ``When you're up here this long, you can't just bottle up your emotions and cope with it all the time,'' the commander of the space station, American astronaut Kenneth Bowersox, said from orbit.
4) ``It's important for us to acknowledge that the people on (Columbia) were our friends, that we had a connection with them and that we feel their loss,'' he said. ``Each of us had a chance to shed some tears, but now it's time to move forward, and we're doing that slowly.''
5) Bowersox said he and his crew, American Donald Pettit and Russian Nikolai Budarin, listened in on last Tuesday's memorial at Johnson Space Center with President George W. Bush. After the ceremony, Bowersox said they rang the ship's bell seven times in tribute to their fallen friends.
6) The three have been in orbit since November and were supposed to return to Earth next month aboard a space shuttle. But all shuttle flights are on indefinite hold because of the Columbia disaster Feb. 1, which killed seven astronauts.
7) All three said that they were prepared to remain in orbit as long as necessary, even up to a year. The space station is equipped with a three-man lifeboat at all times, and NASA is considering having them return in it, if their replacements arrive via another Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
8) Bowersox said NASA has been ``real good'' about giving them some time off to grieve. Treadmill workouts have helped, he added.
9) ``One of the things we noticed that really helps is exercise,'' Bowersox said. ``It's incredible how it seems to sort of even out your nervous system and just put you in a better mood no matter what's going on around you on board.'' _ _ _ =
10) On the Net:
11) NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov


Negotiations under way with Russia to bring home, replace space station crew
(APW_ENG_20030227.0357)
1) With space shuttle flights on hold because of the Columbia disaster, negotiations are under way with Russia to use Soyuz spacecraft to bring home and replace the crew aboard the international space station, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said Thursday.
2) Under the plan being considered, O'Keefe said, a Soyuz spacecraft from Asia would carry an American astronaut and Russian cosmonaut to the space station. They would occupy the station while the three crewmen now on board would return to earth on another Soyuz craft, which is now attached to the space station.
3) O'Keefe made the remarks in prepared testimony to the House Science Committee.
4) Rep. Nick Lampson, introduced legislation Thursday that would allow National Aeronautics and Space Administration to help Russia purchase additional Soyuz and Progress spacecraft if President George W. Bush notifies Congress that the vehicles are needed to ensure the safety of the crew aboard the space station.
5) The Feb. 1 Columbia space shuttle accident, which killed the seven astronauts, forced NASA to ground the entire shuttle fleet. The shuttle is used to ferry astronauts from Earth to the space station, and a crew change-out flight had been scheduled for April. That flight is indefinitely suspended until the Columbia accident investigation is completed.
6) ``It is clear we are now very dependent on the Russian space program as a sole means of support for the space station until the shuttle fleet returns to service,'' Lampson said.
7) Lampson's bill would exempt NASA from the Iran Nonproliferation Act of 2000, which forbids payments to Russia. The proposed legislation would allow NASA to make such payments to cover the cost of additional spacecraft.


Next space station crew downsized to two in wake of shuttle accident
(APW_ENG_20030227.0823)
1) The international space station's next resident crew will be downsized to two members instead of the usual three and will be launched on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft because the space shuttle fleet is grounded following the Columbia accident, NASA officials announced.
2) The two person crew _ one American and one Russian _ will be launched in late April or early May and deliver a fresh Soyuz, the space station's lifeboat, officials said Thursday.
3) The station's current crew of Americans Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit and Russian Nikolai Budarin would return to Earth on the Soyuz currently docked to the orbiting outpost. The three have been in orbit since November. Station crews normally are exchanged on shuttle flights.
4) Currently two U.S. astronauts and two Russian cosmonauts are training in Russia for the two slots. The crew, set to be the seventh to live on the station, will be chosen in mid-March, said NASA spokesman Rob Navias.
5) The two astronauts are C. Michael Foale and Edward Lu, while the two cosmonauts are Alexander Kaleri and Yuri Malenchenko. The four have been training since last week. Lu, Kaleri and Malenchenko were originally the three-person crew set to replace the space station's current residents. Foale had already been picked to be the commander of the eighth resident crew.
6) ``Based on the normal Soyuz rotation (about every six months), if shuttles are not flying by mid-October, we will do another two-man rotation using (another) Soyuz,'' Navias said.
7) The 16 nations involved in the program decided Wednesday to go with a two person crew because only a limited number of supplies, particularly water, can be delivered to space station Alpha while the shuttle fleet is down. Russian Progress vehicles, cargo ships that are launched and dock automatically at the station, cannot alone deliver enough supplies to maintain a three person crew, Navias said.
8) The station currently has enough fuel to stay in orbit for another year but future Progress vehicles will deliver additional fuel. Assembly of the station has been halted. Scientific experiments will continue but on an altered basis with the two-person crew.
9) The station was designed to run unmanned if necessary, but that was not a serious consideration, Navias said.
10) ``It was the unanimous belief of the partnership that it was very important to keep the station manned to maintain the capability onboard, to deal with any unexpected systems issues and to press on with the science program that may be available to be conducted under the circumstances,'' he said.
11) NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe told the House Science committee on Thursday the Russians have agreed to build enough spacecraft to send four Progress ships to the space station this year and five in 2004 to keep Alpha resupplied.
12) While no timeline was discussed for the shuttle's return, officials have planned for a worst case scenario of going 18 months to two years with two-man crews. ``As long as Soyuz and Progress vehicles are produced...you could stay with a two-man crew (rotation) indefinitely,'' Navias said.
13) Once the new station crew members arrive, they will work with the current residents for a period of four to six days on handover procedures before Bowersox, Pettit and Budarin return to Earth. _ _ _ =
14) On the Net:
15) NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov


More food, more work for astronauts when space station shifts from three- to two-person operation
(APW_ENG_20030228.0404)
1) Going from a three-man to a two-man crew will be a mixed bag for the future occupants of the international space station, the station's current inhabitants said Friday.
2) There will be fewer people using the bathroom and exercise equipment and less demand on the water supply, said commander Ken Bowersox in a broadcast interview from 240 miles (386 kilometers) up.
3) But there will be more work with one less person aboard, he said.
4) ``Sometimes it's nice when you have an extra set of hands,'' Bowersox said. ``On the other hand, the basic maintenance for everyday life is going to be easier.''
5) NASA officials announced Thursday that the next space station crew will be two people instead of three when the crew changes out in late April or early May. The new crew _ one American and one Russian _ will deliver a fresh Russian Soyuz, the space station's lifeboat.
6) The station's current crew _ Bowersox, science officer Donald Pettit and Russian flight engineer Nikolai Budarin _ will return to earth after being in orbit since November.
7) The 16 nations involved in the international space station decided this week to go with a two-person crew because the Russian delivery vehicles are too small to deliver the amount of supplies and water carried by the shuttle. The U.S. shuttle fleet has been grounded since the Feb. 1 Columbia accident.
8) ``When you have a crew of three, the skill mix you find is greater than when you have two folks,'' Pettit said. ``When you have two ... you may find yourself relying on the ground for help.''
9) Pettit acknowledged that the science on the space station will be cut back in part because the number of test subjects is decreasing from three to two. Crew members use each other as guinea pigs to see how human bodies respond to microgravity.
10) Construction on the space station also will come to a halt. The crew members said they didn't think the space station would be any lonelier for the smaller crew because they will still be able to stay in touch with family, friends and colleagues on the ground by e-mail and phone.
11) ``I think it's great to have more people to talk to, but I think two people is still sustainable,'' Bowersox said. ``I've felt pretty well in touch with everyone I want to be in touch with ... That really helps fend off the chances of feeling isolated.''


Ohio school children grill space station crew about dirty clothes, bathing in space
(APW_ENG_20030306.0644)
1) The crew of the international space station let some grade school students in on a dirty little secret Thursday _ they change their clothes only once a week.
2) The three crew members _ commander Kenneth Bowersox, science officer Don Pettit and Russian flight engineer Nikolai Budarin _ answered questions on everything from space food to hygiene during a 20-minute broadcast interview by students from Glenwood Elementary School near Toledo, Ohio.
3) ``We don't wash our clothes,'' Pettit said in response to a question. ``We'll wear a change of clothes for about a week.''
4) Bowersox told the students that each crew member gets five pairs of running shorts, five T-shirts, 12 pairs of underwear, eight pairs of socks, a pair of regular shorts and a pair of pants.
5) No, crew members can't bring their own clothes from home, said Budarin in response to a question.
6) ``I prefer to wear T-shirts and shorts everyday,'' Budarin said.
7) Crew members wash with wet towels, Pettit said. There is a limited water supply on the station, 240 miles above Earth.
8) ``Up here, the air temperature is always the same temperature and we only sweat when we work out,'' Pettit said. ``The only thing that really gets smelly is our workout clothes.''
9) The crew members said the best part about living on the space station was being able to float and seeing the Earth from space.
10) ``The Earth is an amazing sight in space ... You can see all the continents and land masses and the oceans,'' Pettit said. ``It's like learning your geography from the best atlas you could possibly have.''


NASA identifies astronaut, cosmonaut for six-month space station stay
(APW_ENG_20030401.0562)
1) An American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut who performed a spacewalk together three years ago will make a return trip to the international space station later this month and replace its current crew, NASA said Tuesday.
2) Edward Lu, a physicist, and Yuri Malenchenko, a pilot and engineer, should have flown to the space station last month, aboard the shuttle Atlantis. But the Columbia catastrophe forced an indefinite grounding of NASA's three remaining shuttles.
3) So Lu and Malenchenko will travel aboard the Russian Space Agency's Soyuz capsule for a space station stay of about six months. The Soyuz is scheduled to lift off from Kazakhstan around April 26.
4) Only two other Americans have ever rocketed away in a Russian spacecraft.
5) The original plan was for Lu and Malenchenko to move into the space station along with another Russian cosmonaut, but the crew was pared from three to two to put as little strain on the station's supplies as possible.
6) That's because supplies are usually carried on U.S. shuttles, which are considerably larger than the Soyuz capsules and Russia's cargo ships. With the shuttle fleet grounding, the space station supplies will need to be stretched for a longer time. In addition, station construction is on hold because only shuttles are big enough to hoist new pieces.
7) Lu, a 39-year-old expert in solar flares, flew to Russia's space station in 1997 and to the fledgling international space station in 2000. Malenchenko, 41, was on that latter shuttle flight, and the two teamed up for a spacewalk to hook up exterior cables.
8) The son of Chinese-born parents, Lu, grew up in Webster, New York, and was working at the Institute for Astronomy in Honolulu when he applied to the astronaut corps in 1994. NASA picked him on his first try.
9) Malenchenko commanded a four-month Mir mission in 1994.
10) The two will spend nearly a week getting a space station tour and insight from the three current residents, Americans Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit and Russian Nikolai Budarin. Those three will return to Earth in early May in the Soyuz capsule presently docked at the station; they have been in orbit since November.
11) Bowersox and Pettit will be the first U.S. astronauts to land in a Russian craft. California millionaire Dennis Tito returned from the space station in a Soyuz two years ago. _ _ _ =
12) On the Net:
13) NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov


Russian prime minister calls for Moscow to increase funding for flights to International Space Station
(APW_ENG_20030403.0184)
1) In a sharp reversal of previous policy, the Russian Cabinet on Thursday pledged extra money for building spacecraft intended to service the International Space Station during the break in U.S. space shuttle flights caused by the Columbia disaster.
2) ``We will undoubtedly have to carry the main workload, having to perform additional launches and flights to the station,'' Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said at the start of the Cabinet session. ``We can't postpone this decision.''
3) Aerospace Agency Director Yuri Koptev told reporters later that the Cabinet had approved the early release of 1.2 billion rubles (US$38 million) originally set for the second half of the year to speed up construction of extra ships.
4) Koptev said the government had also tentatively promised to bolster the space station's budget from some 4 billion rubles (about US$130 million) this year to some 7.5 billion rubles (about US$240 million) next year.
5) Up to now, Russian officials had contended that it could not build extra ships for the international space station without a U.S. financial contribution.
6) The U.S. space agency NASA has said that any potential American funding is constrained by U.S. legislation barring additional payments to Russia's space agency unless Washington confirms Russia has not transferred missile technology or nuclear, chemical or biological weapons to Iran in the previous year.
7) With U.S.-Russian ties cooled over the war in Iraq, a congressional waiver of the bill appears all but excluded. U.S. officials also emphasized that Russia was failing on its obligations to service the station.
8) Koptev reaffirmed Thursday that Moscow would continue seeking U.S. financial assistance for the construction of ships, but acknowledged that U.S. space shuttles had performed some of the functions on the station that the cash-strapped Russian program failed to accomplish.
9) ``Now it's coming back to us and it's hard to complain about that,'' he said.
10) The alternative is to leave the station temporarily unoccupied, a prospect that could jeopardize its safety, Koptev said. Since discarding its own Mir space station in March 2001, Russia's manned space program has hinged entirely on the international outpost.
11) Russian Soyuz crew capsules and Progress cargo ships remain the only link to the 16-nation station as the U.S. shuttle fleet remains grounded pending an investigation into the Columbia catastrophe. Soyuz ships serve as lifeboats for the crew and must be changed every six months, while Progress ships ferry fuel, water and other supplies.
12) In the past, U.S. space shuttles performed rotation of the station's long-term crew, while Russia used Soyuz capsules to earn extra cash by bringing space tourists on weeklong missions to the station.
13) Because of the break in shuttle flights, U.S. astronaut Edward Lu and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko are to ride a Soyuz to the station on April 26 for a six-month mission.
14) The station's current residents, Americans Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit and Russian Nikolai Budarin, will return to Earth in early May in another Soyuz capsule presently docked at the station.
15) Koptev said Russia hopes to earn an additional US$22-25 million by flying a European Space Agency astronaut to the station in October during the next changeover of the station's crew.
16) (pvs/vi/ji)


Space station crew members make successful repairs in final spacewalk before returning home
(APW_ENG_20030408.0597)
1) The astronauts aboard the international space station completed a second and final spacewalk Tuesday as NASA took advantage of having a three-member crew on hand to perform maintenance work.
2) Commander Ken Bowersox and science officer Don Pettit successfully finished their assigned tasks in five hours after the spacewalk began at 1240 GMT.
3) Since the spacewalk had been scheduled for 6{ hours, they were able to spend another hour and 20 minutes collecting tools and tethers that had been left outside during previous spacewalks.
4) Russian flight engineer Nikolai Budarin assisted from inside the station, orbiting 240 miles (386 kilometers) above Earth.
5) ``I want you all to know how happy everybody is, what a great job you guys did,'' said Carlos Noriega, the spacewalk communicator in Houston, told the astronauts when they returned to the station. ``You guys basically set the standard.''
6) The three men are supposed to return home in early May after they are replaced by astronaut Ed Lu and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko.
7) Space station program manager Bill Gerstenmaier said the space agency considered doing the repairs with just two people, but that was ``not as desirable.''
8) ``We looked at tasks that we thought we could go ahead and do now while we had three crew on board,'' he said. ``We determined exactly which tasks would give us the most benefit for the station for long-term.''
9) The current crew has been on the station since late November. They had been scheduled to return to Earth in March, but their stay was extended after space shuttle Columbia's accident Feb. 1 grounded the shuttle fleet indefinitely.
10) The space station's next crew must be smaller because they must travel to the space station aboard the more compact Russian Soyuz, which can't carry the people and equipment a shuttle can.
11) The Soyuz is tentatively scheduled to launch later this month from Kazakhstan.
12) The astronauts successfully replaced a power box on a rail car that moves along tracks on a truss framework, reconfigured a power connector on a mechanism holding trusses together and placed clamps on coolant system lines to prevent internal leakage. They installed backup power lines to devices that maintain the station's orientation.
13) The astronauts also deployed a stubborn light fixture that they had been unable to pry loose during their first spacewalk Jan. 15. Pettit struck the fixture 10 times with a hammer before it was knocked loose. The light fixture will be used to illuminate a section of the station's exterior during future spacewalks.
14) During a lull, Pettit took photos of Bowersox against the golden hues of the station's solar panels.
15) The astronauts also took time to admire the view of Earth from outside the space station.
16) ``Better turn around and look at this. It's Santiago, Chile,'' Bowersox told Pettit. ``It's almost worth the price of admission.'' Pettit took a look and agreed: ``Oh, man. Wow.'' _ _ _ =
17) On the Net:
18) NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov


Russian cargo ship nudges international space station to higher orbit
(APW_ENG_20030410.0291)
1) A Russian cargo ship began nudging the international space station to a higher orbit Thursday in preparation for the arrival of the station's next crew.
2) The Progress M-47 cargo ship began pushing the station about 3 kilometers (2 miles) higher, the ITAR-Tass news agency said, citing Russian mission control.
3) The maneuver is the last in a series of orbit adjustments aimed at facilitating the docking of a Soyuz spacecraft with the station, ITAR-Tass said. The Soyuz, which lifts off April 26 from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome, will bring the station's new crew, U.S. astronaut Edward Lu and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko.
4) The station's orbit gradually decreases under the pull of the Earth's gravity and needs regular adjusting.
5) The space station's current crew, U.S. astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit and cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin, will return to Earth on an older Soyuz currently serving as the station's lifeboat. They'll leave behind the fresh vehicle that they arrive in.
6) With U.S. space shuttle missions suspended pending the investigation into the Columbia disaster, Russian ships have become the only link to the outpost.
7) (sk/mb)


New space station crew takes final tests before blastoff
(APW_ENG_20030416.0124)
1) The two-member, U.S.-Russian crew heading to the International Space Station next week started its final, preflight examination Wednesday at Russia's cosmonauts' training center outside Moscow.
2) U.S. astronaut Edward Lu and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko are scheduled to blast off on a Soyuz space rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on April 26. Russian rockets are currently the only transport to the station following the suspension of U.S. shuttle flights in the wake of the Feb. 1 Columbia disaster.
3) Their backup crew, Russian Alexander Kaleri and American Michael Foale, also started their final exam Wednesday, working in a replica of a spaceship while Lu and Malenchenko practiced biological experiments in a mock-up of the Russian-made section of the space station. The two crews are to switch places on Thursday.
4) ``They've got very experienced instructors down here. They know how to make a cosmonaut of you,'' Lu told reporters in Russian.
5) The space station's current crew, U.S. astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit and cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin, will return to Earth on an older Soyuz spaceship, which is currently serving as the station's lifeboat.
6) (aptn/ji)


Russian rocket prepared for launch to international space station
(APW_ENG_20030424.0132)
1) Right on schedule, a giant hangar door in the once super-secret Baikonur cosmodrome slid open Thursday, revealing the Russian rocket that will ferry the next crew to the international space station _ the first manned launch since the Columbia shuttle disaster.
2) The 40-meter rocket, topped with the Soyuz TMA-2 spacecraft, is scheduled to blast off Saturday from Russia's most storied launch pad, affectionately known as the ``Gagarin Launch.'' The small white ship will carry Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and American astronaut Edward Lu to the space station for a six-month stay.
3) They will replace U.S. astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit and cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin, who have been in space since November. The three will return to Earth in early May on an older Soyuz spaceship already docked at the station.
4) ``Everything is ready to go,'' said Sergei Gorbunov, chief spokesman for Rosaviakosmos, the Russian space agency, after the rocket was carried by train roughly 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) across the barren Kazakh steppe to the launch pad and gently hoisted into position.
5) The Soyuz's arrival was cheered not only by Russian space officials, but also NASA, which had to cancel plans to deliver the new crew members to the space station on the shuttle Atlantis after the Columbia accident. Until space shuttles start flying again, Russian rockets remain the only link with the station, located some 400 kilometers (250 miles) away from Earth.
6) ``The launch of the Soyuz takes on a major importance ... in wake of the Columbia accident,'' said NASA spokesman Ron Navias. ``It illustrates the true mettle of an international partnership that put this mission together in less than three months time.''
7) The Russian government agreed earlier this month to boost funding for building more spacecraft to fill the gap left by the suspension of the shuttle flights. Russia also rearranged its own space schedule to take over NASA's commitment to deliver the new crew and thereby maintain the station's goal of permanently inhabiting space.
8) ``Columbia has affected us in so many ways,'' said Anatoly Pavlov, deputy director of the Baikonur factory responsible for putting together the Progress cargo vessels that deliver food, fuel and water to the space station. ``But as with anything else, we are carrying on and trying to get the job done.''
9) Columbia disintegrated on Feb. 1 over Texas, killing all seven astronauts. A breach along the leading edge of the left wing that let in hot atmospheric gases is considered to be the most likely cause.
10) The Russian manned space program has had no fatalities since three cosmonauts died during re-entry in 1971, although it has had some close calls.
11) ``No one can guarantee safety 100 percent,'' Gorbunov said. ``But the Soyuz has a very good safety record.''
12) Russians bristle at suggestions that the Soyuz, unlike the more glamorous shuttle, is based on old-technology. Anatoly Zak, a Russian space historian, said that while the craft may look like it hasn't changed much, ``all of the crucial systems have been updated.''
13) Meanwhile, Russia's own version of the shuttle, the Buran, or Blizzard, was mothballed after a single, flawless unmanned flight in 1988 because of money problems.
14) A single Buran _ its outer layer partially chipped away and some graffiti scrawled on its side _ sits parked between two crumbling bunkers overgrown with weeds less than 5 kilometers (3 miles) away from the main launch pad, the site where Yuri Gagarin became the first man to roar into space in 1961.
15) (mb/sk)


U.S. astronaut says he will be thinking of the shuttle victims on his mission
(APW_ENG_20030425.0087)
1) When U.S. astronaut Edward Lu blasts into space Saturday aboard a Russian-made rocket, he'll be thinking about more than just his mission to the international space station: He'll be remembering seven colleagues who never made it home.
2) Lu, from Webster, New York, and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko were given final approval from Russian officials on Friday for their six-month mission to the space station _ the first manned launch since the Columbia shuttle disaster.
3) The Russian Soyuz TMA-2 capsule that will carry them is scheduled to lift off in less than 24 hours from the once super-secret Baikonur cosmodrome in the Kazakh steppe.
4) The launch comes less than three months after the Columbia shuttle disintegrated over Texas on Feb. 1, killing all seven astronauts on board.
5) ``One of the things that we've been talking about and thinking about is that they never really completed their mission. They accomplished their mission, but they never completed it,'' Lu told journalists outside the Cosmonaut Hotel where they have been sequestered ahead of the launch. ``We are doing what I think they would have wanted and what their families would have wanted us to do _ continue the process of flying into space.''
6) Lu said that he will be wearing a patch from the Columbia shuttle mission on his spacesuit in memory of the Columbia astronauts.
7) ``We'll be thinking about them during the flight up and on the way down,'' he said.
8) Lu and Malenchenko, along with Russian cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri, had been scheduled to go up to the space station aboard the shuttle Atlantis, but after the Columbia accident, NASA suspended all flights _ putting the future of the space station at risk.
9) The international community has relied on the shuttle to ferry rotating crews to and from the US$60 billion station, while the Russian craft brought visiting crews up twice a year and were left behind to serve as ``lifeboats'' in case the station had to be quickly evacuated.
10) With the shuttle suspension, Russian officials agreed to take up the slack, and rejigging their schedule to deliver Lu and Malenchenko on a Soyuz. Officials decided to fill the third seat with extra supplies rather than a cosmonaut because Russian craft don't have the space that the shuttle has to ferry large shipments.
11) The two men will replace U.S. astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit and cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin, who have been in space since November. They will return to Earth in a Soyuz early next month.
12) Malenchenko acknowledged that he and Lu will find their mission on the station more difficult with only two people and said that many of their planned projects had to be canceled.
13) ``But we still have an important mission and we are well prepared,'' he said.
14) Pyotr Klimuk, the head of Russia's cosmonaut training center, and Yuri Semyonov, the chief of RKK Energiya, the company that builds the Soyuz rockets, declared all preparations complete and the mission ready to go.
15) The 40-meter (130-foot) rocket will blast off from Launchpad 1, the same pad where Yuri Gagarin roared into space in 1961.
16) Keeping with Russian tradition, Lu and Malenchenko will wake up at 1 a.m. on Saturday to begin preparations for their flight. Christine Romero, Lu's fiancee, said that he is brimming with excitement. So is she: It will be the first launch she has ever seen.
17) ``He kept telling me I should go see a launch before it is him in there,'' she said.
18) (mb/sk)


BAIKONUR: their replacements.
(APW_ENG_20030425.0715)
1) ``This is a big responsibility right now,'' said Lu of Webster, New York, speaking with journalists Friday on the front steps of the Cosmonaut Hotel. ``We will be continuing human space flight.''
2) Columbia disintegrated over Texas on Feb. 1, killing all seven astronauts on board and raising questions about what would happen to the space station, which is heavily reliant on the U.S. vehicle.
3) Russia agreed to step in to take up the slack, a move that both NASA and Russian space officials have said is testament to the new era of cooperation between their agencies, once fierce competitors.
4) Russian officials rearranged their space schedule to accommodate Lu and Malenchenko, who initially had planned to hitch a ride to the station on board the shuttle Atlantis.
5) They will replace U.S. astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit and cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin, who have been in space since November. The trio will return to Earth in early May on another Soyuz _ one is always kept docked at the station as a ``lifeboat'' in case the crew needs to evacuate quickly _ after giving Lu and Malenchenko a weeklong tour.
6) Russian and U.S. experts scrambled to get Expedition 7 ready in record time. Lu, already a veteran astronaut and a decent Russian speaker, had to brush up on his language skills and cram what is usually a yearlong training period into less than three months.
7) MORE


Russian rocket with Russian cosmonaut and U.S. astronaut blasts off to International Space Station
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1) A Soyuz TMA-2 rocket with American astronaut Edward Lu and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko aboard blasted off for the International Space Station on Saturday on a mission intended to keep space exploration going despite the Columbia tragedy.
2) From deep in the Kazakh steppe, the 40-meter (130-foot) Russian rocket, the latest version of the world's longest-serving manned spacecraft, soared into space at 7:54 Moscow time (0454 GMT) on its way to the ISS, some 400 kilometers (220 miles) above Earth.
3) With a roar and thundering sound, the rocket trailed a tail of fire as it reached into the blue sky scattered with occasional clouds. Onlookers applauded when the rocket finally reached orbit.
4) ``It's a kind of mix of joy, relief and sheer pride,'' said Christine Romero,'' Lu's fiancee who was on hand for the launch. ``After the tragedy we've endured, we just feel so proud to be part of this. We are riding on their coattails.''
5) Lu's brother, Rick, also watched as his sibling left Earth. ``It is exhilarating. My heart is still beating,'' he said.
6) According to Russian tradition, it is bad luck for family members to attend the launch and none of Malenchenko's relatives were present.
7) Just before the launch, Lu and Malenchenko received their final checks behind a glass wall to keep germs out. Technicians pumped up their bulky white suits to make sure there were no leaks. Asked how he was feeling, Lu, speaking in Russian, said, ``Otlichno,'' which means `excellent.''
8) Sergei Mironov, speaker of the upper house of the Russian parliament, the Federation Council, was on hand to deliver a message of good luck from Russian President Vladimir Putin to the U.S.-Russian crew.
9) Speaking at Russian Mission Control outside Moscow shortly after the launch, Russian flight director Vladimir Solovyov said all had gone well.
10) ``They flew up normally. The parameters of the orbit are perfectly normal. ... The cosmonauts are feeling well,'' Solovyov said.
11) Usually just a reserve, safety vehicle, the Soyuz _ based loosely on the same technology that sent Yuri Gagarin into orbit in 1961 _ is now Earth's only link with the US$60 billion space outpost. NASA and the Russian space program are relying on it to get the three-man crew currently on the station home, and ferry up their replacements.
12) Columbia disintegrated over Texas on Feb. 1, killing all seven astronauts on board and raising questions about what would happen to the space station, which is heavily reliant on the U.S. vehicle.
13) U.S. and Russian officials scrambled to get a mission ready after the Columbia disaster.
14) ``This is something that I am sure the history books will write about,'' Frederick Gregory, deputy director of NASA said, speaking at Baikonur. ``A launch like this keeps us all motivated and looking forward.''
15) At Russian Mission Control, Joel Montalbano, a NASA flight director for the ISS, said that Saturday's flight was ``a tribute to the robustness of the ISS partnership.'' Both countries had learned from each other after the Columbia breakup. ``It's kind of like a family relationship,'' Montalbano said.
16) Russia agreed to step in to take up the slack, a move that both NASA and Russian space officials have said is testament to the new era of cooperation between their agencies, once fierce competitors.
17) ``This is a big responsibility right now,'' said Lu of Webster, New York, speaking with journalists Friday on the front steps of the Cosmonaut Hotel. ``We will be continuing human space flight.''
18) Russian officials rearranged their space schedule to accommodate Lu and Malenchenko, who initially had planned to hitch a ride to the station on board the shuttle Atlantis.
19) They will replace U.S. astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit and cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin, who have been in space since November. The trio will return to Earth in early May on another Soyuz _ one is always kept docked at the station as a ``lifeboat'' in case the crew needs to evacuate quickly _ after giving Lu and Malenchenko a weeklong tour.
20) Russian and U.S. experts got Expedition 7 ready in record time. Lu, already a veteran astronaut and a decent Russian speaker, had to brush up on his language skills and cram what is usually a yearlong training period into less than three months.
21) Though based on technology that is decades old, the Soyuz has a strong safety record; its last fatality dates back to 1971, when three cosmonauts died during re-entry.
22) Solovyov, the Russian flight director,'' said having two crew on the ISS instead of three reduced the program slightly but not by a third.
23) Lu, looking relaxed on the eve of his flight, Lu told journalists that space travel's latest victims would be specially remembered on this mission. Sewn onto his spacesuit was a patch from the Columbia mission.
24) ``We'll be thinking about them on the launch up and on the way down,'' Lu said Friday, before flashing his fiancee, who had never seen a space launch before, a special hand sign that his friends said means: ``Everything's OK.''
25) (mb/sk/dgs)


Russian-American duo open new post-Columbia chapter in space travel as they blast into orbit
(APW_ENG_20030426.0178)
1) As U.S. astronaut Edward Lu and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko thundered toward the international space station Saturday, those who stayed on Earth hailed the opening of a new chapter in space travel after the Columbia shuttle disaster.
2) The launch of a Russian Soyuz rocket _ vital to keeping the station manned in the wake of February's accident, which killed seven astronauts and grounded the shuttle fleet _ also represented renewed prominence for Russia's space program, which has been reduced to ferrying tourists in recent years in an effort to stay afloat financially.
3) Strapped snugly in their Soyuz TMA-2, Lu and Malenchenko set off on a journey that will take them some 400 kilometers (250 miles) above Earth for a six-month stay on the space station.
4) The 7-metric-ton (7.7-ton) craft disappeared into a bright morning sky. About nine minutes later, Russian flight controllers announced that it had safely entered orbit and was chasing the space station for a Monday docking high above Russia. The announcement brought a round of applause, and Russian officials began pouring brandy.
5) The trip followed a breathless race by Russian and American experts to get the mission and its crew ready after the temporary loss of shuttle flights. Lu and Malenchenko were initially scheduled to ride to the space station last month on the shuttle Atlantis.
6) ``This is something that I'm sure the history books will write about,'' Frederick Gregory, deputy administrator of NASA, said at Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome, located in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan. ``You have to be impressed with the Russian ability to simplify a very complex action.''
7) Lu's fiancee, who watched the launch in the Kazakh steppe, said it was a great achievement.
8) ``After the tragedy we've endured, we just feel so proud to be part of this,'' Christine Romero said. ``We are riding on their coattails.''
9) The cash-strapped Russian space program, whose constant funding shortfalls have earned it a reputation among some as a hindrance to the space station's development, is now emerging as its knight in shining armor.
10) The Russian Soyuz, whose primary role had been to serve as an emergency evacuation craft for the station, is now the only ship capable of carrying crews to and from the US$60 billion space outpost.
11) ``Basically, it came to this: Right now there is only one ship that can take a crew to the international space station, and it's ours,'' said Sergei Gorbunov, spokesman for Russia's space agency. ``Russia has to do it. No one else, not even the Americans, can right now.''
12) With the space budget a fraction of what it was in the Soviet era, Russia has struggled to find ways to earn cash for its program. It sold two trips to space in 2001 and 2002 for about US$20 million each. Russia has had to practically freeze construction on its segment of the station because of its cash shortage.
13) ``Unless we finish the Russian section, we can forget about our scientific programs in space,'' Russian space agency chief Yuri Koptev said Saturday, according to the Interfax news agency. ``The Americans will have their own segment, as will the Japanese, while we will work as spaceship drivers.''
14) Koptev said NASA's new reliance on Russia after the grounding of the shuttle fleet should translate into more financial assistance from the United States. The topic will be on the agenda when he meets with NASA officials May 5.
15) ``Russia will face an additional burden if, in the worst-case scenario, shuttle flights are resumed a year later,'' Interfax quoted Koptev as saying. ``We need financial support from our partners.''
16) A week after Malenchenko and Lu arrive, the station's current inhabitants, U.S. astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit and cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin, will come home on the Soyuz TMA-1 currently docked to the station.
17) ``It is going to be kind of difficult for them because they planned on coming back on the shuttle,'' said Yuri Semyonov, director of RKK Energiya, the company that builds the Soyuz.
18) Malenchenko and Lu's first task will be to give the outgoing crew some quick lessons on operating the ship.
19) (pvs/mb/sk/ji)


Russian spacecraft climbs toward space station
(APW_ENG_20030427.0539)
1) American astronaut Edward Lu and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko neared the international space station early Monday in a Russian spacecraft to relieve the three crew members on board the station.
2) Russian Mission Control said that all systems were operating normally and the two crew members were in good spirits Sunday, a day after the rocket blasted off from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Kazakh steppe.
3) The Soyuz TMA-2 capsule was scheduled to reach the US$60 billion orbiting station early Monday. The station is currently home to U.S. astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit and cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin, who have been in space since November.
4) Russia's launch was vital to keeping the station manned in the wake of February's Columbia accident, which killed seven astronauts and grounded the shuttle fleet. It also represented renewed prominence for Russia's space program, which has been reduced to ferrying tourists in recent years in an effort to stay afloat financially.
5) The automated docking will take place about 250 miles (400 kilometers) above earth.
6) It will take about 10 minutes for the Russian spacecraft to be sealed to the space station.
7) Then the crew will spend 90 minutes checking for any leaks before opening the hatch and greet the awaiting astronauts, said Rob Navias, spokesman for NASA.
8) Lu and Malenchenko are bringing gifts to celebrate the birthdays of Pettit, who turned 48 on April 20, and Budarin who turns 50 on Tuesday, Russia's ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
9) But there won't be much time to celebrate: the crews have a lot of information to exchange, including explaining safety procedures to the arriving astronauts.
10) The American and Russian duo, meanwhile, will be giving Bowersox, Pettit and Budarin a refresher course on how to operate the older Soyuz capsule, which has been docked at the station.
11) Bowersox, Pettit and Budarin will use the older ship to return to Earth on May 3. The trip will mark the first time U.S. astronauts have come home on a Russian ship.
12) Lu and Malenchenko, who briefly visited the space station in 2000 before it was permanently occupied, are scheduled to remain on the orbiting outpost until October.
13) The newer Soyuz, which they traveled in, will stay with them in case an emergency evacuation is needed.


URGENT Soyuz TMA-2 space capsule with American astronaut and Russian cosmonaut aboard docks with international space station
(APW_ENG_20030428.0024)
1) The Soyuz TMA-2 space capsule carrying American astronaut Edward Lu and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko docked Monday with the international space station in a key step to replacing the three-man crew already on the ISS, space officials said.
2) The docking took place on schedule at 9:56 a.m. Moscow time (05:56 GMT) about 400 kilometers (250 miles) high above Russian territory.
3) Lu and Malenchenko are replacing the trio of U.S. astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit who along with Russian cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin were stuck on the station after the Columbia Shuttle disaster Feb. 1.
4) MORE


URGENT MOSCOW: safety procedures.
(APW_ENG_20030428.0026)
1) The American and Russian duo will give Bowersox, Pettit and Budarin a refresher course on how to operate the Soyuz capsule, which they will use to return to Earth on May 3.
2) The three returning crew members will be taking back an older Soyuz already docked to the station, while the one carrying Lu and Malenchenko will stay up there with them as an ``emergency lifeboat'' in case they need to quickly evacuate.
3) The trio's return on the Soyuz will mark the first time that U.S. astronauts have come home on a Russian space vesssel. Originally they had planned to return on a U.S. shuttle but the Columbia disaster forced the grounding of the U.S. fleet.
4) The Russian Soyuz then became the only ship capable of carrying crews to and from the space outpost, giving it a vital role in keeping the station manned.
5) Lu and Malenchenko, who briefly visited the space station in 2000 before it was permanently occupied, are scheduled to remain onboard until October.
6) (pvs/sk/dgs)


High anxiety for weekend space landing, the first since Columbia disaster
(APW_ENG_20030501.0762)
1) Anxiety is high for this weekend's return of three international space station residents who will be making the first spacecraft landing since the Columbia disaster and NASA's first touchdown on foreign soil.
2) ``I think we are all going to be paying a little bit more attention to landing operations,'' said Dr. Terry Taddeo, a NASA flight surgeon who will monitor the event from the U.S. space agency in Houston.
3) With the space shuttle fleet grounded indefinitely, the two American astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut will barrel back to Earth at about 0200 GMT Sunday in a Soyuz capsule that is a throwback to the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spacecraft days.
4) Instead of splashing into the ocean as in NASA's early days, the capsule will parachute into Kazakhstan. Instead of rolling to a gentle stop on a Florida runway surrounded by swamps and alligators, the capsule will thump down in a remote steppe populated by camels.
5) American astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit consider it the experience of a lifetime to cap a stretched, five-month mission. There is no extraordinary angst, Pettit assured reporters this week. Russian cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin has already been through it twice before.
6) But in everyone's minds is the fact that the last time humans descended through the atmosphere from orbit, the spaceship broke into tens of thousands of pieces and all seven on board died.
7) To protect against the scorching temperatures of re-entry that penetrated Columbia's damaged left wing and led to the shuttle's destruction over Texas on its way home Feb. 1, Russia's smaller, wingless, bell-shaped capsule has a thick, tough heat shield on the base, similar to NASA's early spacecraft.
8) It is essentially a ballistic entry, said NASA's space station program manager, Bill Gerstenmaier, and, if all goes well, almost entirely automated. It is a much rougher ride than the shuttle, with crews briefly experiencing up to seven times the force of Earth's gravity, compared to just a few times the force of gravity on the shuttle.
9) The Soyuz heat shield will pop off shortly before touchdown to expose six small braking rockets that will fire two seconds before impact to soften the blow. Then a convoy of helicopters filled with Russian and American doctors and space officials will descend on the craft to pop the hatch, pull out the spacemen, and examine and congratulate them.
10) NASA astronauts have not experienced anything like this since 1975 _ and will have to get used to it until shuttles are flying again. Bowersox, the space station's commander, and his crew were supposed to fly back on Atlantis in mid-March, the same shuttle meant to deliver their replacements.
11) But following the Columbia catastrophe, the replacement crew's flight was bumped onto a Soyuz and into April, and went from three men to two to conserve water and other station supplies. These two _ American Edward Lu and Russian Yuri Malenchenko, who docked at the space station Monday _ will return in their Soyuz this fall.
12) The only American to land in a Soyuz is California millionaire Dennis Tito, who bought his way into space and back two years ago.
13) At a space industry conference in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Wednesday, Tito recalled it was ``a pretty wild ride,'' even by Soyuz standards. Bad data resulted in a steeper than usual return path.
14) ``You're like a meteor coming through the atmosphere, little pieces of heat shield breaking off, flying by your window,'' Tito said. ``Holding on for dear life, hoping that the thing isn't going to break up because at this point there's nothing you can do.''
15) In 42 years of manned Russian spaceflight, two missions have ended in tragedy, both during Soyuz re-entries: One cosmonaut was killed in 1967 when the parachute systems failed at the end of a troubled mission. Three died in 1971 when a leak siphoned out all their air.
16) No matter what the vehicle, ``re-entry's a tough environment. I think the Columbia maybe brought that more home than we were thinking about,'' Gerstenmaier said.
17) ``In the past, you worry about the launch and you don't worry so much about coming home,'' Taddeo said.
18) No more. _ _ _ =
19) On the Net:
20) NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov


URGENT ASTANA, Kazakhstan: Central Asia.
(APW_ENG_20030503.0463)
1) The Soyuz TMA-1 spacecraft separated from the station at 2243 GMT Saturday, said officials at Russian mission control outside Moscow, where the ship could be seen on a big screen, backing slowly away from the station. Landing was set for 0207 GMT Sunday in a remote spot 400 kilometers (250 miles) southwest of Kazakhstan's capital, Astana.
2) The three men aboard the Soyuz _ astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit and cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin, were the first to try a return to Earth since the U.S. shuttle Columbia was destroyed over Texas on Feb. 1 and its seven astronauts were killed. There was added tension because the trip was the first descent for the new, modified Soyuz model.
3) Bowersox and Pettit became the first NASA astronauts to head back to Earth in a foreign spacecraft _ and to foreign soil. They spent 5 1/2 months aboard the space station with Budarin, longer than intended because of the Columbia disaster, which grounded the shuttle program and forced them to return aboard the Russian craft. MORE


URGENT ASTANA: in space.
(APW_ENG_20030504.0014)
1) Rather than gliding to Florida in a shuttle, Kenneth Bowersox, Donald Pettit and their Russian colleague Nikolai Budarin rode in a Soyuz TMA capsule, just over two meters by two meters (two yards by two yards) in size. Russian mission control announced the capsule's landing at 6:19 a.m. (0219 GMT), about 3 1/2 hours after it undocked from the space station.
2) It landed just north of the Aral Sea, mission control said. The landing site was some 400 kilometers (250 miles) west of the target.
3) ``We are all very happy. It just took a little longer than we anticipated,'' said Allard Beutel, a NASA official at mission control. MORE


URGENT ASTANA: in case.
(APW_ENG_20030504.0018)
1) The scheduled landing site was a remote spot about 400 kilometers (250 miles) southwest of Kazakhstan's capital, Astana _ on hard ground, not in water as was the U.S. space programs' practice in the pre-shuttle days.
2) Because the Soyuz is so cramped, Bowersox, Pettit and Budarin were bringing back very little _ mainly just a few small personal items, film, water and other environmental samples, and a handful of science experiments.
3) Bowersox and Pettit spent 5 1/2 months aboard the space station with Budarin. That was two months longer than planned because after the Columbia accident extra time was needed to bring their replacements aboard another Soyuz.
4) Astronaut Edward Lu and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko checked in last week for a six-month stay that promises to be a challenge, given the reduction in crew size to conserve supplies until shuttle flights resume.
5) Handing over command to Malenchenko before floating into the Soyuz for the flight home, Bowersox told the new crewmen, ``You guys have to be the two luckiest guys who come from planet Earth today. Over the next six months you get to live aboard this beautiful ship.''
6) ``Yuri, I'm ready to be relieved,'' he added.
7) From the ground, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe wished both crews ``Godspeed'' and told the returning trio, ``Put in your order for how you want your steaks done so we can have them ready for when you arrive.''
8) Russian cosmonauts regularly descend in capsules _ most recently in Nov. 10, 2002, when two Russians and a Belgian returned to Earth.
9) In a linkup to the station broadcast live on Russian state television Saturday before the undocking, Budarin played down the risk of returning in a Soyuz that has not landed before, saying the differences from the previous model were ``only modifications.''
10) ``I have made two descents in a Soyuz and there were no problems at all, and I think there won't be any problems this time,'' he said, bobbing slowly up and down in zero gravity.
11) Bowersox, speaking Russian, said the mission aboard the station went well. ``We carried out everything we intended to, but most important is that we worked well together as an international crew,'' he said.
12) NASA pulled out all the stops for the touchdown, sending Polk and his fellow NASA flight surgeon along with a defibrillator, heart monitor, and trauma and resuscitation equipment. U.S. Air Force doctors were also deployed for the landing, along with a miniature operating room, and some major hospitals in Europe were on alert.
13) ``Even that much medical force is pale compared with we normally have'' in Cape Canaveral, Florida, for shuttle landings, Polk said. ``It probably is overkill, but you never want to say 'if only' in the spaceflight business.''
14) The Russians, who typically have just a handful of doctors present for a Soyuz landing, have been understanding, Polk said.
15) ``Probably, medical support will shrink after this, once we become comfortable with this vehicle and comfortable with the situation,'' he said.
16) (md/mb/dgs/ji)


Russian-American crew lands safely but far wide of mark
(APW_ENG_20030504.0212)
1) A Russian Soyuz spacecraft safely delivered a three-man, U.S.-Russian crew to Earth on Sunday in the first landing following the Columbia space shuttle disaster, but ended up hundreds of kilometers (miles) short of its target and way out of reach of search-and-rescue helicopters.
2) Russian spotters found the capsule on the scrub-covered steppe north of the Aral Sea after a nerve-racking, two-hour air search for the two Americans _ the first U.S. astronauts to land on foreign soil and in a foreign spacecraft _ and the Russian. The three crewmen had opened the hatch and climbed out of the spacecraft, and stood waving at the search plane.
3) Arriving at the airport in the Kazakh capital Astana for the ride back to Star City, the cosmonaut training center outside Moscow, U.S. astronaut Kenneth Bowersox told U.S. and Russian space officials the crew was feeling fine.
4) ``Just normal return to Earth,'' he said with a broad smile.
5) Though they looked pale and squinted in the bright sunlight, he and Russian cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin got out of the sedans that had carried them from the helicopter and walked to the waiting plane with sure strides. The other U.S. astronaut, Donald Pettit, looked queasy and weak and could hardly walk. Several people had to help him go from the helicopter to the plane, and then up the steps. When he made it to the top, the crowd of about 50 space officials from both countries applauded.
6) The crew's arrival in Astana, following the lengthy search, ended a mission already severely shaken by the Columbia catastrophe on Feb. 1, which led to the grounding of the U.S. shuttle fleet and forced a change in travel plans for the astronauts left stranded in space.
7) The head of the U.S. space agency NASA, Sean O'Keefe, admitted he had been nervous but he put a positive spin on the landing and lauded the Russian-U.S. cooperation that had allowed the space program to continue.
8) ``At the time when we needed them most, Russia, our partners, have excelled,'' O'Keefe told reporters at Russian mission control outside Moscow. ``Today's challenge further demonstrates that space exploration is a very, very risky business. Today's success story is that the international space station goes on because of their (the Russians') commitment.''
9) Russian aerospace agency Sergei Gorbunov said a special commission will investigate the circumstances of the landing, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
10) Rather than gliding to Florida in a shuttle, the three crewmen rode in a Soyuz TMA capsule, just over two meters by two meters (two yards by two yards) in size.
11) Ten search helicopters carrying NASA doctors, Russian space agency and military officials and journalists set out from the Kazakh capital Astana to find the capsule. Crew members listened in to radio updates on the progress of the Soyuz's descent, and everything appeared to be going well.
12) But at the appointed touchdown time, no parachutes or capsule could be seen in the clear sky or on the barren steppe. In one helicopter, two Russian air force officers huddled together, each holding half of one headset to an ear. As the minutes wore on, they gestured to the others on board that nothing had been heard from the spacecraft or seen on the ground. The helicopters finally headed back to Astana _ leaving the spotting to other aircraft.
13) ``Nervous. Nervous. This landing was unusual,'' said Talgat Musabayev, a cosmonaut who had accompanied American space tourist Dennis Tito to the space station two years ago and was in one of the helicopters that returned to Astana.
14) At mission control, elation over the landing turned to confusion. There were conflicting reports of where the capsule had landed and whether communications had been established. Russian space officials retreated to their offices, leaving NASA officials and journalists in the dark.
15) Finally, mission control announced that the capsule had landed just north of the Aral Sea. The landing site was some 460 kilometers (287 miles) southwest of the target, said NASA spokesman Rob Navias. The capsule had landed on its side and apparently been dragged about 12 meters (40 feet), probably by the main parachute.
16) During the 3 1/2-hour flight back to the Moscow area, Bowersox told The Associated Press that he and his crewmates were well aware that they would land short of the touchdown site, but were not too worried.
17) ``I was just happy we were down, that everything was safe,'' he said. ``It was the most beautiful dirt I've ever seen.''
18) At an airfield near the Star City cosmonaut training center outside Moscow, Pettit's wife boarded the plane, while Bowersox and Budarin walked off the aircraft and embraced their wives. They were greeted by a crowd of about 50 people huddled under umbrellas in the drizzle.
19) ``The mission was a complete success,'' said Jim Newman, an astronaut in charge of NASA's human spaceflight program in Russia who was stranded in Astana, waiting for helicopters to pick up the crew.
20) ``Hey, they're alive.''
21) Allard Beutel, a NASA official at mission control, said the capsule had landed on a steeper trajectory than expected, falling short of the target landing site.
22) A Russian ballistic researcher, Nikolai Ivanov, said such a descent would have increased the force of gravity to G-9, well above the maximum planned G-7 but still within a range the astronauts could tolerate. He also said that the so-called ballistic descent could have adversely affected the capsule's communications system, hampering the search-and-rescue efforts.
23) Yuri Semyonov, director of RKK Energiya, the company that builds Russian spacecraft, said human error could not be excluded: Someone could have pulled one lever when they intended to reach for another. It was the first time the new Soyuz model had gone through a descent.
24) ``We very often get used to the fact that everything will work as normal,'' said Russian space agency chief Yuri Koptev. ``But space is a new horizon.''
25) ``The most important thing is 'a happy end,' he told reporters at mission control, switching to English.
26) The three crewmen spent 5 1/2 months aboard the space station _ two months longer than planned because after the Columbia accident extra time was needed to bring their replacements aboard another Soyuz.
27) Astronaut Edward Lu and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko checked in last week for a six-month stay that promises to be a challenge, given the reduction in crew size to conserve supplies until shuttle flights resume. _ _ _ _
28) EDITOR'S NOTE _ Associated Press writer Mara D. Bellaby contributed to this report from mission control outside Moscow.
29) (md/mb/ji/dgs)


Space station men return safely in Russian capsule, but land far off-course
(APW_ENG_20030504.0361)
1) A Russian capsule safely returned two astronauts and a cosmonaut from the international space station on Sunday, but the landing, nearly 500 kilometers (300 miles) 300 miles off target, triggered a nerve-racking two-hour search in the steppes of Central Asia.
2) The three men were finally spotted in the vast, brown, barren stretches of Kazakhstan by a recovery plane and waved to show they were fine. Helicopters arrived for them an hour or two later.
3) ``I was just happy we were down, that everything was safe,'' astronaut Kenneth Bowersox told The Associated Press while flying back to cosmonaut headquarters at Star City outside Moscow. ``It was the most beautiful dirt I've ever seen.''
4) It was a dramatic end to a 5 1/2-month space station mission for Bowersox, who served as the commander, astronaut Donald Pettit and cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin.
5) Because it was the first manned space landing since the Columbia shuttle disaster and the first touchdown by NASA astronauts in a foreign spacecraft in a foreign land, tension was running high. It shot up when nothing was heard from the crew following its last radio call 16 minutes before touchdown. By coincidence, that was the same time communication ceased with the Columbia astronauts over Texas on Feb. 1.
6) What kept NASA officials from becoming too frightened was the fact that the Soyuz crew had just reported the main parachute opened normally and the most brutal part of atmospheric re-entry was over. Columbia was ripped apart after the scorching heat of re-entry penetrated its damaged left wing; all seven astronauts were killed.
7) Because of that accident and the indefinite grounding of NASA's shuttle fleet, the space station residents had no choice but to return on the Soyuz that had been docked as a lifeboat for six months. They rocketed into orbit last November aboard there shuttle Endeavour and were supposed to return on Atlantis in March.
8) Bowersox, Pettit and Budarin knew during re-entry that they were coming in steep and faced high gravity forces, or G loads. When they saw the computer indicate they would miss their landing target, ``our eyes kind of went like this,'' Bowersox said, pretending to widen his eyes with his hands.
9) ``But honestly it wasn't frightening,'' he said. ``It was just, I'll call it an interesting test flight experience.''
10) This latest Soyuz model had never descended from orbit before _ until Sunday.
11) The spacemen experienced more than 8 G's on the way down, twice the usual amount, but were not injured. A half-hour after landing, they popped open the hatch and crawled out of the capsule, which had dragged 40 feet and ended up on its side, its antennas smashed into the ground. Pettit had a bad case of motion sickness, common among astronauts returning from their first spaceflight, especially a long one.
12) No one was there to greet them. But after 161 days in space, they did not mind a little time to themselves to get their land legs back _ and to savor the scenery.
13) ``We could smell the dirt. We could smell the grass,'' Bowersox said. ``It was fantastic, and also the smell of the pyrotechnic bolts that open the parachute cover and open the antennas, that smoke came in. It was a gorgeous smell.''
14) They waited two hours until the recovery plane passed overhead and another two hours before two helicopters arrived from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, the Russian space agency's main launch site. Two more hours passed before any NASA personnel got to them _ eight had been en route, but six were sent back in helicopters to the Kazakh capital Astana because they were running low on fuel.
15) NASA's lead flight surgeon and an astronaut assigned to a space station crew this fall were the only Americans who made it to the landing site.
16) Dr. Mike Duncan was enthralled by the sight of a capsule surrounded by drooped parachutes. It was the first time in 28 years that NASA astronauts returned to Earth in a capsule and the first time ever that NASA astronauts landed in a capsule on the ground _ they'd always touched down at sea before that.
17) ``I would have loved to have been able to spend more time just absorbing the moment and seeing the vehicle, but there wasn't time,'' Duncan said. ``You can't be a tourist,'' he added with a laugh.
18) By the time the former station residents were flown by helicopter to Astana, about 50 U.S. and Russian space officials and Kazakh dignitaries were waiting for them. Three girls dressed in green and violet traditional Kazakh costumes handed a bouquet of red roses to Bowersox and Budarin as they climbed the steps into the plane for the ride to Star City _ the last leg of their full-day journey. Pettit had to be helped on board.
19) Each spaceman was applauded as he entered the plane, and was embraced by almost everyone on board. Bob Cabana, director of flight crew operations for NASA, was moved to tears when he saw the crew. He had sweated through the two hours of uncertainty, and was disappointed he was not able to reach the landing site.
20) Cabana said the Russian space agency was determined to learn why the capsule undershot its landing target. A commission was immediately established to investigate the matter, space agency chief Yuri Koptev said.
21) NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe noted that without the Russians and their Soyuz spacecraft, the station would have had to be abandoned until shuttle flights resumed.
22) ``At the time we needed them most, Russia, our partners, have excelled,'' O'Keefe said. ``The international space station goes on because of their commitment.
23) O'Keefe and Koptev gathered at Star City for the crew's homecoming, along with the wives of all three spacemen.
24) Micki Pettit rushed into the plane to embrace her husband, feeling a little better but still shaky. Their 2 1/2-year-old twin boys got to see their father soon afterward.
25) Bowersox's wife, Annie, left their three sons at home in Houston because of school. He and Pettit will remain in Star City for two weeks to recuperate from the lingering effects of weightlessness, mostly weakened muscles and bones and imbalance.
26) Throughout the day, Bowersox said he managed to ``choke back the tears.''
27) ``But I know when I'm going to cry is when I hug my kids.'' _ _ _ =
28) On the Net:
29) NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov
30) (md/int/sbg)


Spacemen lucky with off-target landing; others ended up in freezing lake or surrounded by wolves
(APW_ENG_20030505.0059)
1) It could have been a lot worse for the two Americans and one Russian whose landing ended up nearly 500 kilometers (300 miles) off course and their recovery hours late.
2) In 1976, a Soyuz spacecraft came down in a freezing squall and splashed into a lake; the crew spent the night bobbing in the capsule.
3) Eleven years before that, two cosmonauts overshot their touchdown site by 3,000 kilometers (2,000 miles) and found themselves deep in a forest with hungry wolves. That's when Russian space officials decided to pack a sawed-off shotgun aboard every spacecraft.
4) Astronaut Kenneth Bowersox said with a smile that he didn't need the gun in the Kazakh steppes where he landed Sunday: ``There was nothing out there but grass and us.''
5) On Monday, Russian space experts met to discuss what went wrong with the Soyuz capsule carrying Bowersox, astronaut Donald Pettit and cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin back from the international space station. The spacecraft was a new model that had never gone through a re-entry before.
6) ``I'll call it an interesting test flight experience,'' Bowersox, a Navy captain and former test pilot, told The Associated Press several hours after touchdown.
7) It was the first time NASA astronauts had returned to Earth in a foreign spacecraft and to a foreign land. The switch from a shuttle to Soyuz landing came after the Columbia disaster in February, which resulted in the indefinite grounding of the entire shuttle fleet.
8) The cockpit computer displays abruptly switched from a normal re-entry to a ballistic one just minutes before touchdown, and the three men knew they were in for a considerably steeper and rougher ride than usual. They came in short of their targeted landing site, and two hours passed before recovery forces spotted them. Two more hours went by before helicopters arrived for them, and another two hours before NASA personnel reached the scene.
9) Bowersox, who commanded the 5 1/2-month space station mission, said he and his crewmates enjoyed having some time by themselves to get their land legs back and savor nature.
10) ``It was the most beautiful dirt I've ever seen,'' he said.
11) By late afternoon, Bowersox, Pettit and Budarin had landed in the Kazakh capital of Astana, and a few hours later, they reached Star City, outside Moscow, where they were greeted by a crowd including their wives.
12) During the flight from Astana to Star City, Bowersox told the AP he thought the crew had notified Russian Mission Control about the computer indications for a ballistic entry, but couldn't be sure. It's also possible communication was lost at that point, he said.
13) The last call received from the Soyuz was to confirm that the main parachutes had deployed 16 minutes before touchdown. The antennas were smashed after the capsule smacked down and was dragged 40 feet by the parachutes.
14) ``We thought everybody should know'' where the Soyuz landed, Bowersox said. ``Obviously, we know so everybody else should know,'' he joked.
15) A similar sentiment was expressed by Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter, who overshot his splashdown point in the Atlantic by 400 kilometers (250 miles) in 1962.
16) Carpenter fell behind in his orbital work and, while rushing to catch up, made a series of mistakes that led to the off-course landing. NASA knew where he was because of radar, but the flight director made sure Carpenter never flew in space again. _ _ _ =
17) On the Net:
18) NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov
19) (md/ji)


NASA chief found himself reliving Columbia tragedy when communication was lost during Russian capsule's descent
(APW_ENG_20030505.0467)
1) It was a sickening feeling he hoped never to experience again, least of all three months later.
2) But when communication with the Russian capsule returning three men from the international space station was lost just minutes before touchdown and the craft could not be found, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe relived the morning of the Columbia disaster all over again.
3) He shuddered just thinking about it Monday.
4) ``God, it was just unbelievable is what it was,'' O'Keefe said in an interview with The Associated Press.
5) Unlike the Columbia accident in February, when NASA knew within minutes the shuttle had broken apart over Texas and all seven astronauts were dead, Sunday's gut-wrenching search dragged on for two long hours. ``It was high anxiety, there's no doubt about that,'' O'Keefe said.
6) O'Keefe, who watched the events unfold from Russia's Mission Control outside Moscow, was overcome with emotion when astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit and cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin were finally found safe in Kazakhstan, nearly 500 kilometers (300 miles) from the spot where the Soyuz spacecraft should have landed.
7) NASA will take part in the investigation into why the Soyuz capsule went into a steep ballistic entry, exposed the crew to twice the usual gravity forces and landed so far off target. A commission of mostly Russian aerospace engineers was established Monday to look into the matter.
8) ``It appears to have been some technical issue'' with the new version of the Soyuz spacecraft, O'Keefe said after meeting with his Russian counterpart, Yuri Koptev, ``but not anything that was outside of the normal.''
9) This new Soyuz model, made roomier at NASA's request to accommodate larger astronauts, was making its first test flight, at least for re-entry.
10) It was launched to the space station six months ago as a lifeboat. The Columbia accident and subsequent grounding of the shuttle fleet forced the space station crew to return in the docked Soyuz, instead of shuttle Atlantis, following a 5 1/2-month mission.
11) On Sunday, the head of Soyuz maker Energiya, Yuri Semyonov, said on Russian TV that one of the Americans on board hit the wrong button.
12) Then on Monday, Semyonov was quoted as saying that one version of the account had Budarin _ an experienced flight engineer but not a pilot _ pushing the button that engaged the ballistic entry. He said the cosmonaut assured him he did not touch anything. A Soyuz descent is almost entirely automated.
13) Bowersox said the computer readouts shifted suddenly from a normal re-entry to a ballistic one. The only way to manually trigger that is to press a button on a handle, and Budarin had that button covered so that it would not be pressed accidentally, the astronaut said.
14) ``We don't think we did anything to cause that to happen,'' Bowersox said in a NASA interview broadcast Monday.
15) O'Keefe agreed that it does not appear the crew is to blame.
16) Semyonov said he expects a finding by June. As soon as the Soyuz arrives at Energiya in Moscow, engineers will examine it, he said.
17) O'Keefe said he wants to send a Global Positioning System satellite receiver and some type of phone to the men now living aboard the space station, astronaut Edward Lu and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko. That way, if their Soyuz goes off course when they return in October, they can pinpoint and report their location.
18) Sunday's blackout began right after Budarin reported that the main parachutes had deployed 16 minutes before touchdown as planned.
19) That was the last call from the Soyuz. By coincidence, that was also the time of Columbia's final communication.
20) Silence followed, then more silence. Touchdown time came and went, and still no word from the spacemen. An hour went by, then another hour, with no one knowing with certainty whether the crew was dead or alive. Helicopters and recovery planes scoured the flat, barren steppes of northern Kazakhstan.
21) Everyone was overjoyed when word finally came that the capsule had been found _ and that the crew was out of the tipped-over spacecraft and waving at the pilots.
22) ``You're obviously not horribly traumatized if you're out and waving at the plane,'' said Dr. J.D. Polk, a NASA flight surgeon who never made it to the touchdown site.
23) Perhaps most ecstatic were the wives of Bowersox and Pettit, who along with one of Bowersox's younger brothers huddled together in Russian Mission Control throughout the ordeal.
24) ``They were just the most courageous people you can imagine, I mean, just amazing,'' O'Keefe said. Annie Bowersox was especially stoic, while ``the rest of us were all hanging on for dear life.''
25) Said Mrs. Bowersox in a NASA interview: ``We just knew it would take a little while.'' _ _ _ =
26) On the Net:
27) NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov


Russian officials say computer software probably sent spacecraft into rare, ballistic descent
(APW_ENG_20030506.0199)
1) A computer software error likely sent a Russian spacecraft into a rare ballistic descent that subjected the three men on board to chest-crushing gravity loads that made it hard to breathe, space experts said Tuesday.
2) If that proves to be the case, it should be an easy repair and the two new residents of the international space station should have nothing to fear when it's their turn to ride a Soyuz capsule back to Earth this fall.
3) A cosmonaut whose own Soyuz landing two years ago was steep but not ballistic, Talgat Musabayev, said Russian space experts believe the problem was caused by software in the guidance computer that was installed in the Soyuz TMA-1 spaceship. It was the first time the new, modified spaceship had been used in re-entry.
4) Astronaut Kenneth Bowersox, the commander of the 5 1/2-month mission, said he and his crewmates knew what was coming when the computer display suddenly switched from a normal to a ballistic entry Sunday.
5) The capsule came in considerably steeper than planned, and the men endured more than eight times the force of gravity, double the usual amount.
6) ``It was easier than I thought it was going to be,'' Bowersox told reporters at cosmonaut training headquarters outside Moscow. ``There's a lot of pressure on your chest and when you come back from space, just one-G makes you feel heavy.
7) ``So it's hard to breathe and your tongue sort of slips in your head and toward the back of your throat.''
8) Astronaut Donald Pettit noted: ``For me, for a moment, it felt like I was Atlas and I had the weight of the whole world on my shoulders.''
9) Their capsule landed nearly 500 kilometers (300 miles) off-target in Kazakhstan. Two hours passed before anyone knew where they were or how they were doing _ indeed, whether they were even alive.
10) During a crowded news conference, the Russian cosmonaut who was in charge of the Soyuz, Nikolai Budarin, said no one on board did anything to trigger the backup computer program for a ballistic re-entry.
11) ``It's for the specialists to figure out what was the cause,'' Budarin said. ``Let's wait and see, but now I can say that it was not our own doing.''
12) Bowersox, a test pilot who assisted Budarin during the descent, said he does not believe the crew made any errors, but acknowledged, ``You just never know for sure.''
13) ``In these types of situations, everything happens fast, sort of a blur, and it's best not to be too positive,'' Bowersox said. ``The tape recorders are much better at analyzing the truth than the humans are.''
14) Pettit still looked weak and a little shaky. He had to be supported following Sunday's landing and could barely walk.
15) He said he was glad to have some privacy at touchdown.
16) ``We'd been prepared that the landing site was going to be a bit of a mob scene with lots of people and hustle and bustle and everything, and I was actually relieved to ooze out of the spacecraft and lay on Mother Earth and just have a solitude moment in which to get reacquainted,'' he said.
17) The spacemen actually had four hours by themselves; that's how long it took helicopters to arrive.
18) Pettit said being tall and skinny, and a first-time space flier, made his transition to gravity all the more difficult.
19) ``I've had a little more trouble walking around than others,'' said the 165-pound 6-footer (75-kilogram, 1 meter, 80-centimeter), ``but I guess I fall in both of those categories.''
20) Bowersox and Pettit will recuperate at Star City for two more weeks before flying back home to Houston with their wives, who sat in on the press conference and beamed with pride.
21) They are the first NASA astronauts to return to Earth in a Russian spacecraft. _ _ _ =
22) On the Net:
23) NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov


Space station commander talks of coping in space during a trying, extended stay
(APW_ENG_20030510.0451)
1) Whenever it got stressful aboard the international space station, astronaut Kenneth Bowersox put on a tie, ``a really ugly tie.''
2) He had taken the tie with him in case he needed cheering up during the long stay in space. It would remind him of his buddies down below, working at their desks, wearing their ties.
3) During the 5{ months he was up there, 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth, he found himself wearing it a lot.
4) First, there was a switch in his spacewalking partner because of health concerns, an awkward, potentially dangerous change that hardly ever happens in orbit. There was the Columbia disaster Feb. 1, the realization that he and his crew would be stuck up there for a while as the space shuttle fleet was grounded. There was the war in Iraq. Then, the planning for a return never expected _ aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule no NASA astronaut had ever flown back to Earth in before.
5) Putting his tie on, ``I'd always feel better,'' the space station commander said, reflecting on the mission that ended last Sunday.
6) Now back on Earth, and home to Houston in just over a week, the 46-year-old Navy captain said in an interview he knows the tough times aren't over yet.
7) ``I know that NASA people have gone through a lot in the last three months. It's been a very tough time for all of our friends here,'' Bowersox said. ``They're still going through that (grieving) process, and we're going to have to sort of catch up on that with them. Hopefully, we'll help them and they'll help us.''
8) The funerals are over though, one of his best friends notes. And for some NASA workers, grief has been supplanted by the passionate urge to fix whatever went wrong and get back to flying shuttles. Still, the grieving process is far from over for Bowersox and fellow astronaut Donald Pettit, said Dr. J.D. Polk, a NASA flight surgeon.
9) ``It's been a delay,'' Polk said. ``They haven't gotten closure on this yet, for them. They're going to need that when they get back, and they'll have a lot more emotional release yet to come as they confront family and friends that they didn't get to express themselves to.''
10) Within minutes of Columbia's breakup over Texas on Feb. 1, Mission Control had relayed the grim news to Bowersox and his crew, Pettit and cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin. The space station skipper wanted to know if any parachutes had been spotted and whether the seven shuttle astronauts might have escaped.
11) ``Even though I told them there were no chutes, we have no beacons, trying to slowly let him know that this crew is lost, it was a very, very hard realization,'' Polk said. ``It probably wasn't until 12 hours afterward that the crew really came to grips with the fact.
12) ``This wasn't just a crew, these were people who were their friends,'' Polk said. ``It was a very personal loss and that was very hard for them.''
13) Bowersox's oldest son, age 10, knew one of the Columbia astronaut's sons. Pettit had been playing chess in space, via e-mail, with Columbia's pilot. So there will be those families, and the five other Columbia astronauts' families, for Bowersox and Pettit to visit.
14) Because the accident occurred on the weekend, Bowersox, Pettit and Budarin were off duty. But by Monday, two days after the tragedy, they were hard at work again. Bowersox wanted the crew to be busy, and he wanted flight controllers to be busy, too.
15) As the days passed, Bowersox kept the radio conversations with Mission Control subdued, out of respect for what had happened.
16) ``We didn't talk a lot, we were pretty much business, trying to be positive,'' he said. ``And then as the flight went on, we tried to be a little more aggressive with the ground and try to joke with them a little bit more.''
17) Their seclusion finally ended when a new Soyuz arrived in late April with their replacements, astronaut Edward Lu and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko.
18) After six days together, the two crews shook hands goodbye, and Bowersox, Pettit and Budarin climbed into their docked Soyuz for the trip home aboard an unfamiliar spacecraft. Only one American had ever descended to Earth in a Russian capsule before _ California millionaire Dennis Tito, who paid for the trip.
19) When they hit the ground a week ago, they were nearly 300 miles (483 kilometers) from their landing site and it took two hours for searchers to find them. Those two hours gave NASA and others monitoring the flight a scare because of a loss of communication with the crew.
20) All but one of the Soyuz antennas were broken or unusable; a computer software error, officials believe, probably caused the steeper and rougher than usual descent.
21) ``Thank God it worked out,'' NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said. ``The amazing part, no injuries, no nothing.''
22) Two days after their hair-raising homecoming, Bowersox and Pettit praised their Russian trainers for preparing them well before the flight for just such a possibility. They also thanked their wives for their courage.
23) ``I think they were both probably hiding it a little bit at Mission Control,'' Bowersox said.
24) He and Pettit have another week of recuperating at Star City before they fly home to Houston.
25) It would be tempting to hurry back to Houston, ``but I want to be here with our (station) partners,'' Bowersox said. ``I want to properly mark the occasion of our return and do the ceremonial functions that are so important. And then I'm going to go home and rest.''
26) Pettit is already getting plenty of rest. The 6-foot, 165-pound (1.8-meter, 74.25-kilogram) engineer returned in a pretty shaky state and has had a rough return to gravity _ apparently the result of being tall, thin and a first-time spaceflier.
27) His stockier and more experienced crewmates were toasting their success with brandy on the plane ride from the Kazakh capital of Astana to Star City. Pettit was lying quietly on a couch.
28) ``It takes a while to get your shore legs back after an expedition like this,'' Pettit explained two days later. His wife, Micki, said doctors advised them it would be another few days before he was truly up and about.
29) And it will be a while longer before he's romping with Evan and Garrett, his 2{-year-old twin sons who greeted him at Star City.
30) Bowersox's sons, ages 10, 8 and 6, are waiting for him back in Houston. Their parents didn't want them to miss school.
31) ``I hope I'm popular with my boys. I think they're all mad at me for being gone,'' the astronaut said.
32) Budarin, a 50-year-old engineer, also must wait a little longer before seeing his first grandchild, Valeriya, who turned one month old on landing day. All three men are confined to Star City until a ceremony on May 19. After that, they will be free to go their separate ways.
33) The three men were forced to leave a batch of personal belongings behind in the space station because the Soyuz capsule was too cramped to bring everything back.
34) Among the items are Pettit's Leatherman tools and didgeridoo, an Australian Aborigine horn that he serenaded his sons with over the radio.
35) And Bowersox's ugly tie is still up there, too. _ _ _ =
36) On the Net:
37) NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov


International space station crew officially welcomed back to Earth
(APW_ENG_20030519.0250)
1) Space officials officially welcomed two U.S. astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut back to Earth on Monday, two weeks after their rough landing in the Kazakh steppe following five and a half months aboard the international space station.
2) Russian cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin and U.S. astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit landed nearly 300 miles off course in Kazakhstan on May 4 after an unexpectedly steep ride from the station aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule. The head of the Russian investigation into the circumstances of the landing said last week that it was most likely caused by a malfunction in the spacecraft's descent control system.
3) The three crew members vowed that U.S.-Russian space cooperation would continue.
4) ``It's a tremendous capability that we have on orbit right now,'' Bowersox told reporters at Monday's ceremony. ``We're going to make it even bigger and more powerful and we're going to finish it together.''
5) He, Pettit and Budarin laid flowers below a statue of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space. Accompanied by their wives and surrounded by well-wishers, they walked through the formerly closed Star City, receiving flowers and the traditional Russian welcome offers of bread and salt.
6) (aptn/ji)


Russian space commission reports technical malfunction to blame for rough Soyuz landing
(APW_ENG_20030526.0066)
1) A technical malfunction, not crew error, was to blame for the unexpectedly steep and off-course landing of the Russian Soyuz spacecraft bringing two Americans and a Russian home from the international space station earlier this month, Russian investigators announced Monday.
2) Nikolai Zelenshchikov, who headed the investigative commission, said that the Soyuz craft ''entered a tough, ballistic descent because of a malfunction in the control system,'' the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
3) Russian cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin and U.S. astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit landed in the barren Kazakh steppe on May 4 about 500 kilometers (nearly 300 miles) short of the planned arrival site after enduring severe gravitational overloads.
4) Their rough descent, and the nearly two hours it took rescuers to find them, gave Russian and U.S. officials a scare. Tension had already been high because it was the first return to Earth since the shuttle Columbia broke up during re-entry in February, killing all seven crew members.
5) Zelenshchikov, deputy chief designer of RKK Energiya, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying that specialists had found no problems with the new software installed on the Soyuz spacecraft. Nor did they discover any errors by the crew, who had expected to return home on board a shuttle.
6) An instrument that had been used for 20 years to control the spaceships' descent failed, Interfax quoted Zelenshchikov as saying.
7) He said that the commission investigating the off-course landing will continue its work because ''experts have been unable so far to reproduce the situation in which this happened,'' ITAR-Tass reported.
8) However, he added, ''it is clear already now how the instrument must be modified so that it will become more reliable.''
9) It was the first time U.S. astronauts had returned on a Russian craft. NASA is depending on the Soyuz ships to keep the space station manned in the aftermath of the Columbia space shuttle catastrophe. The U.S. shuttle fleet has been grounded pending the investigation into that disaster.
10) (mb/ji)


Next space station crew uncertain about how they'll get back
(APW_ENG_20030815.0113)
1) The next crew of the international space station blasts off in a Russian Soyuz vehicle in just over two months, but they don't know how they will be returning to Earth.
2) ``Some people might say you're unwise taking a one-way trip into space, but we always do have the Soyuz vehicle that we launch on to return in,'' Michael Foale, commander of the Expedition 8 mission, said Thursday at a news conference in Houston, monitored at Cape Canaveral.
3) Foale and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri will spend more than six months in space after their Oct. 18 launch in Kazakhstan. By the time of their late April return, NASA may be ready to resume flights of its space shuttles, which have been grounded since the Feb. 1 disintegration of Columbia. All seven crew members died.
4) NASA, which has depended on Russian vehicles to deliver food and supplies to the space station since the Columbia accident, hopes to resume shuttle flights sometime between March 11 and April 6.
5) European Space Agency astronaut Pedro Duque of Spain will blast off with the Expedition 8 crew members and spend eight days at the space station before returning with the current two-man crew, astronaut Ed Lu and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko.
6) The space station crew was reduced from three to two after the Columbia accident because a Soyuz can't deliver as much food and supplies as a shuttle. Foale said he and Kaleri planned to carry out 15 science experiments, and have been training to make a two-man spacewalk.
7) Spacewalks on the space station in the past have only been done with three people _ two outside and one inside, providing guidance.
8) ``I was very concerned that without the shuttle ... we wouldn't have much to do,'' Foale said. ``As it turns out, there is an enormous amount of equipment and we can use that equipment to do a number of experiments.''
9) Duque, who is returning to Earth in a Russian Soyuz, said he wasn't worried about a repeat of the last Soyuz landing in May when the capsule landed nearly 300 miles off target in Kazakhstan. All future Soyuz crafts will be equipped with satellite communications technology.
10) The three men said the Columbia accident didn't deter them.
11) ``It brings a little more to your mind that space flight is risky,'' Duque said. ``But we are still going, and we still have our faith put in the engineers and the ground teams.'' _ _ _ =
12) On the Net:
13) NASA: http://www.spaceflight.nasa.gov


Russian cargo ship blasts off to ferry supplies for international space station
(APW_ENG_20030829.0478)
1) A Russian cargo ship carrying food, water, oxygen and other supplies for the international space station blasted off Friday from the Baikonur cosmodrome and the head of the company that builds Russian spacecraft said the station's future was jeopardized by the absence of U.S. participation.
2) The Progress M-48 lifted off as scheduled at 5:48 am (0148 GMT) from Baikonur which Russia leases from the ex-Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, said Russian Mission control spokesman Valey Lyndin.
3) Russian crew capsules and cargo ships have emerged as the only link to the station as the U.S. shuttle fleet has been temporarily grounded after the shuttle Columbia disintegrated during its return to Earth in February, killing all seven people on board.
4) ``The non-participation of the United States in supplying the station, the absence of a definite deadline for the investigation into the causes of the Columbia space shuttle crash and limited funding are all clouding the future of the project,'' Yuri Semyonov, head of the Energiya spacecraft-manufacturing company, said in Baikonur, according to the Interfax news agency.
5) Semyonov said the space station issue should be discussed by Presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush.
6) The Progress _ carrying about 2.6 metric tons (2.9 tons) of fuel, food, water, oxygen, scientific equipment and other supplies _ is set to dock with the space station at 7:45 (0345 GMT) Sunday.
7) The space station's current crew, U.S. astronaut Edward Lu and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, arrived April 28 aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule.
8) Among other supplies, the cargo ship will bring satellite phones for the crew. The need for them was highlighted by a steep, off-course landing of the previous crew made up of Americans Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit and Russian Nikolai Budarin in May.
9) The Soyuz's antennas were damaged when it landed in the barren Kazakh steppe on May 4 about 500 kilometers (nearly 300 miles) short of their planned arrival site, and it took rescuers nearly two hours to find them. Russian investigators blamed the tough landing on a malfunction in the control system.
10) (pvs/jh)


Bush meets space station crew
(APW_ENG_20031001.0607)
1) Two astronauts and a cosmonaut from the international space station strode into the Oval Office on Wednesday for a quick meet-and-greet and photo-taking session with President George W. Bush.
2) Cmdr. Ken Bowersox and his crew members, Donald Pettit and Russian cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin, arrived at the White House clad in their blue space uniforms. NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe also was on hand.
3) The three rocketed into orbit last November and spent 5 1/2 months 250 miles above Earth.
4) A Russian capsule safely returned the three on May 4, but the landing, nearly 300 miles (500 kilometers) off target, triggered a nerve-racking two-hour search in the steppes of central Asia.
5) The three men were finally spotted in the vast, brown, barren stretch of Kazakhstan by a recovery plane and waved to show they were fine. Helicopters arrived for them an hour or two later.


Space station crew prepares to return to Earth on Russian spaceship
(APW_ENG_20031027.0165)
1) An American astronaut and Russian cosmonaut on Monday spent the final hours of their nearly six-month tour on the International Space Station preparing for a lightning journey back to Earth inside the wingless Russian spacecraft filling in for the United States' grounded shuttle fleet.
2) It will be only the second time that a U.S. astronaut comes home in a Russian craft and lands on foreign soil. Space officials are hoping for less drama Tuesday than the nerve-racking landing in May, when a computer error sent the Soyuz' American and Russian crew on a wild descent 400 kilometers (250 miles) off-course.
3) American astronaut Ed Lu, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and the station's eight-day visitor, Spanish astronaut Pedro Duque, are scheduled to thump down in the barren and sparsely-populated north-central Kazakh steppe at 05:41 Moscow time (0241 GMT) Tuesday.
4) Lu and Malenchenko are to arrive home in the same Russian Soyuz that propelled them into orbit nearly six months ago, demonstrating NASA's full dependence on Russia _ from launch to landing _ to keep its astronauts flying.
5) ``This essentially completes a cycle of Russia being able to launch our crews to continue a manned presence on the space station,'' said NASA spokesman Rob Navias in the Kazakh capital, Astana.
6) Russian aerospace engineers said there was only a slim chance that this crew would suffer from the same computer malfunction that sent the station's previous inhabitants on such a steep trajectory home that their tongues rolled back in their mouths. The May landing was so far off-target that more than two gut-wrenching hours passed before rescuers knew the men were safe.
7) ``There is very little probability of another ballistic landing,'' said Gen. Vladimir Popov, who heads the team responsible for Russia's space search and rescue operations. ``But we must be prepared for any variant, and we are.''
8) Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic, agreed to a Russian request to close off a wider swathe of airspace than previously, said Mikhail Zotov, the search and rescue spokesman. Rescue crews will fly from three locations instead of one to cover all the possible landing spots, he said.
9) Thirteen helicopters, four planes and numerous off-terrain vehicles will take part in the operation. The search teams will include flight surgeons from NASA and the European Space Agency.
10) Additionally, this Soyuz is equipped with satellite phones and a global positioning satellite system, courtesy of NASA. So if the crew does land off-course and communications systems are damaged as happened in May, they should still be able to pinpoint and phone in their location.
11) The rocky May landing came just three months after Columbia broke apart during re-entry, killing all seven astronauts. A Russian commission concluded that the Soyuz' guidance system malfunctioned, causing the capsule to revert to a steep landing that subjected the crew to roughly eight times the force of gravity.
12) ``This Soyuz is still technically susceptible to the same type of problem but the Russians believe they understand it well enough and they've trained the crew ... so they can possibly do something manually to override the computer,'' Navias said.
13) (mb/ji)


URGENT Soyuz space capsule carrying an American, Russian and Spaniard lands in Kazakhstan
(APW_ENG_20031027.0725)
1) A Soyuz space capsule carrying an American, a Russian and a Spaniard landed safely Tuesday in the wide open steppes of Kazakhstan, Russian Mission Control said.
2) The 3.5-hour trip descent to Earth was only the second time that a U.S. astronaut has come home in a Russian craft and landed on foreign soil. Since the disintegration of the space shuttle Columbia in February put NASA manned space flights on hold, the Russian Soyuz capsules have been the linchpin of the space station program.
3) Officials at Mission Control outside Moscow and others waiting in Kazakhstan for the landing were pleased that the wild ride of the last Soyuz descent in May, which ended with the American and Russian crew going some 400 kilometers (250 miles) off-course due to a computer error was avoided.
4) MORE


URGENT MOSCOW: their location.
(APW_ENG_20031027.0727)
1) The May landing rattled Russian space officials and NASA, which had sent their top administrators to Mission Control outside of Moscow to monitor the maiden return of the new model Soyuz with its first-ever U.S. and Russian crew. It came just three months after Columbia broke apart during re-entry, killing all seven astronauts.
2) Russian aerospace engineers made minor adjustments to the Soyuz that blasted off Oct. 18, but the Soyuz coming home Tuesday was already docked in space so no changes were made.
3) ``This Soyuz is still technically susceptible to the same type of problem but the Russians believe they understand it well enough and they've trained the crew ... so they can possibly do something manually to override the computer,'' NASA spokesman Rob Navias said in Astana, Kazakhstan's capital.
4) About three hours before departure, Lu, Malenchenko and Duque bid farewell to the station's new crew, American Michael Foale and Russian Alexander Kaleri.
5) Malenchenko returns to Earth a married man, having married Texas resident Ekaterina Dmitriev by proxy while in space. The new bride will be waiting at a military air base near Star City outside Moscow, where the cosmonauts will be flown later Tuesday.
6) Also waiting will be NASA scientists, eager for water samples and, if there is room, a canister of air from the space station. Monitoring equipment onboard has broken down, leading some NASA officials to reportedly express concerns about keeping crews up there. NASA, along with astronaut Foale, have dismissed the fears, saying there are no indications of a health risk.
7) (vi/dgs)


Russia hoists rocket into launch position to take next crew to international space station
(APW_ENG_20040417.0278)
1) A Russian rocket that will ferry the next crew to the international space station was hoisted into launch position on Saturday, bringing the third manned mission since the halt of the U.S. shuttle program one step closer to blast-off.
2) Adhering strictly to traditions born in the early days of the Soviet space program, the 40-meter (132-foot) Russian rocket began its half-kilometer (mile-long) rail journey from the assembly hangar to the launch pad, at precisely 7 a.m. (0300 GMT).
3) Armed police with dogs and two fire engines accompanied the Soyuz-FG rocket topped by the Soyuz TMA-4 spacecraft along its slow, two-hour trip across the barren and windy steppe of western Kazakhstan.
4) A military helicopter circled above as the non-reusable rocket was maneuvered into position at the Baikonur cosmodrome, Russia's launch site for manned space missions.
5) The spacecraft with Russian Cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, American astronaut Michael Fincke and Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers aboard will lift off into space on Monday.
6) Since the suspension of NASA's shuttle program following the February 2003 Columbia disaster, the missions to the orbiting station have been aimed mainly at keeping the station afloat until the shuttle takes off again.
7) The Soyuz spacecraft can take aboard only three astronauts and has very limited cargo capacity _ factors that have slowed the assembly of the space station, which needs more crew and more cargo to be completed.
8) NASA spokesman Rob Navias said Saturday in Baikonur that the resumption of shuttle flights was ``still some time away'' and might happen only ``by this time next year.''
9) The obligation to keep the international space station manned has forced Russia to put on hold construction of its own segment of the station as well as some commercial projects.
10) ``Our incomes have dropped,'' Sergei Gorbunov, chief spokesman for the Russian space agency Rosaviakosmos, said Saturday.
11) NASA has turned down the Russian space agency's proposal to provide financial backing to enable Russians to deliver more cargo and men to the station.
12) Within the next few weeks, NASA will decide whether to support Russia's other proposal: to extend a crew's stay in orbit from six months to one year _ a move which would allow Russia to make money giving rides to well-paying space tourists.
13) Navias said NASA was ``evaluating the request'' and would do ``the right thing'' for the international station and astronauts.
14) Meanwhile on Saturday, the crew members continued to go through preflight drills with the American and Dutch astronauts preparing for their first space flight.
15) ``The crew is excellent, and well-trained as a team,'' said Maxim Kharlamov, chief of training at Russia's Cosmonaut Training Center.
16) Padalka and Fincke, who were initially trained to fly on a U.S. shuttle, will spend 183 days on the space station. Kuipers will return after nine days with the station's current crew, U.S. astronaut Michael Foale and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri, who have been working there since October.
17) (bb/an/ji)


NASA rejects Russian request for yearlong space station stay
(APW_ENG_20040420.0446)
1) NASA has turned down a Russian request for astronauts to spend a full year aboard the international space station, saying it lacks the medical know-how for such excessively long stints.
2) The Russian Space Agency wanted to extend a future crew's mission from six to 12 months, so it could fill the seats on the ferrying capsule with tourists or other paying customers who would spend a week at the station. A Russian Soyuz capsule is launched to the station every six months, and the two seats that would have been taken by the replacement crew could have been sold.
3) Americans have spent no more than 6 1/2 months at a time in space, while a handful of Russian cosmonauts have flown a year or more. The world space endurance record, held by a cosmonaut, is 14 1/2 months.
4) ``We know we'll eventually need to extend the amount of time astronauts are in space to prepare for the missions outlined in the new vision for space exploration'' by President George W. Bush in January, NASA said in a statement this week.
5) Medical researchers are studying what it will take for lengthy expeditions to the moon and Mars, ``however, we don't see a way to practically address these concerns in time to support'' the space station crew that will fly this October, NASA said. Spokesman Allard Beutel stressed Tuesday that the space agency is not ruling out the possibility of a yearlong station mission down the road.
6) For such a major change in plans, NASA as well as all the other station partners _ the space agencies of Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada _ would have to agree.
7) The shuttle fleet has been grounded since last year's Columbia accident and is not making station deliveries. As a result, the station has a smaller than usual crew and fewer than usual supplies and replacement parts, and a yearlong mission would be an added burden.
8) What's more, NASA said in a letter to the Russian Space Agency last week, U.S. flight surgeons do not yet have sufficient measures to counter the debilitating effects of weightlessness from such a long mission. Side effects include weakened bones and muscles, and increased radiation exposure.
9) The space station is limited to two full-time residents _ one fewer than normal _ until shuttle flights resume, as early as next spring.
10) The Russian Space Agency had proposed prolonging the mission of the two-man crew due to be launched in October. It would not have affected the spacemen who will move into the orbiting complex on Wednesday for a six-month stay.
11) The Russians already fly European astronauts for a high price on the Soyuz capsules that dock with the space station and serve as lifeboats. A Dutchman is currently on just such a flight. Two space tourists also have bought Soyuz seats, and a third has one on hold for next year. _ _ _ =
12) On the Net: NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov


Russian officials report small leak on spacecraft that will bring ISS crew back to Earth
(APW_ENG_20040428.0147)
1) The Russian Soyuz spacecraft that will return three astronauts to Earth from the International Space Station this week is leaking helium, Russian space officials said Wednesday.
2) The leak is very minor and does not pose any danger, Vera Medvedkova, spokeswoman for Russian Mission Control, told The Associated Press. NASA also said the leak poses no threat.
3) ``There are absolutely no safety concerns,'' said Debbie Rahn, a NASA spokeswoman currently in Russia.
4) Russian Mission Control, NASA and the Russian space agency, Rosaviakosmos, said there is no need to modify the landing, which will be carried on as scheduled on Friday.
5) ``This leak doesn't present any kind of danger for the landing of this crew, and the landing will be carried out according to plan,'' Vladimir Solovyov, the chief of Russia's Mission Control, was quoted by the Interfax and ITAR-Tass news agencies as saying.
6) The helium is used to pressurize the Soyuz craft's fuel tanks for its de-orbit descent, Rahn said.
7) ``There is plenty of helium there to pressure the propellent tank,'' she said, adding that the Soyuz also has a backup system available.
8) Solovyov told Interfax that the leak was found several months ago, but that specialists didn't consider it significant enough to delay the landing. Rahn confirmed that it had been found earlier and that extensive talks between NASA and Russian flight teams had taken place.
9) ``Similar small leaks of helium have been found earlier in other Soyuz crafts, but they have had no effect on the cosmonauts' return to Earth,'' Solovyov was quoted as saying. ``In all similar cases, the landing has been successful.''
10) The Soyuz TMA-3, which has been in space for six months, is scheduled to return two International Space Station residents, American astronaut Michael Foale and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri, to Earth on Friday. European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers of the Netherlands will also be returning after a nine-day mission on the station.
11) The U.S. manned space program has been entirely dependent on Russia's Soyuz crafts since the grounding of U.S. shuttles following the Columbia disaster in February 2003.
12) (mb/ji)


American, Russian, Dutch space travelers safely return to Earth
(APW_ENG_20040430.0294)
1) An American, a Russian and a Dutchman came hurtling back to Earth on Friday strapped tightly into a Russian space capsule, touching down for a spot-on landing that capped a ride they described as beautiful but tiring.
2) ``It feels like after a good party,'' said American astronaut Michael Foale, who had spent six months circling the Earth onboard the International Space Station with Russian cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri.
3) The Soyuz TMA-3 capsule that brought them and European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers of the Netherlands home, touched down flawlessly in the steppes of Kazakhstan. The bell-shaped descent module landed upright, on its bottom, and the astronauts, enfeebled by the speedy descent, were carried out.
4) Crews rushed to bundle them in fleece-lined sleeping bags and serve hot tea to stave off the early-morning chill.
5) ``It was heavier, or more violent, than I thought. I braced myself but nevertheless my head went forward - but no wounds,'' said Kuipers, who was returning from a nine-day mission to the station. ``But it is a nice feeling if the parachute goes open and, yes, it was a beautiful ride. Everything works fine. Its great!''
6) NASA hailed the smooth operation as another sign of American-Russian cooperation more than a year after the U.S. shuttle program was grounded because of the Columbia disaster. Columbia broke up as it re-entered the atmosphere over Texas on Feb. 1, 2003, killing all seven astronauts.
7) Friday's landing marked the third time an American astronaut had come back to Earth aboard a Russian craft, which are filling in for the shuttles.
8) ``It was right on the money _ an almost bull's-eye landing,'' Rob Navias, the spokesman for the U.S. space agency NASA, said at the landing site near the town of Arkalyk. He said it showed ``how integrated the space crews are on both sides of the ocean.''
9) The landing of the space station's previous American-Russian crew in October also went without a hitch _ unlike the dramatic landing of the first American astronaut in a Russian Soyuz capsule in May 2003, when a computer error sent the crew on a wild descent 400 kilometers (250 miles) off-course.
10) Before entering the capsule Thursday night, Foale and Kaleri formally handed control of the station to the new crew, Russian Gennady Padalka and American Michael Fincke, who had arrived nine days earlier.
11) The grounding of the shuttle fleet has put on hold the assembly of the station as Russia's cash-strapped space agency cannot afford more frequent Soyuz flights. And the Soyuz itself is unlike the spacious shuttle; it is a small vessel with room enough to hold only three passengers and 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of cargo.
12) The main task of the two-man missions currently being sent up are to maintain the orbital outpost in a working condition.
13) ``We saw that two men can do a lot,'' Foale said, but added: ``We are waiting for the resumption of shuttle flights, which might happen in about a year.''
14) In Kostanai, a Kazakh town north of Arkalyk, where the Russian search and rescue operation had its headquarters, local officials gave the astronauts a red-carpet welcome. They were presented with traditional embroidered Kazakh robes and hats.
15) Still unsteady on their feet, each astronaut was walked by the arm and sat down on a chair for a press conference before being flown to Star City, Russia's cosmonaut training center near Moscow.
16) Asked if he wanted to go back to the space station, Foale said: ``Not now.''
17) ``I feel the nice smell of earth ... and you are the first people I see after six months away. It's nice to be here,'' he said in Russian.
18) (bb/mb)



(APW_ENG_20041003.0016)
1) There's no space in the space station.
2) So a few weeks ago, the two astronauts who live there tossed out some useless junk, like so many old hubcaps for the trash heap.
3) Only this stuff floated away in space.
4) And the throwing-away _ done during a recent spacewalk _ was done cautiously so that the discarded antenna covers and expired pump panel didn't become deadly boomerangs.
5) Such is life in space, post-Columbia.
6) With no garbage pickup by shuttles for nearly two years, the international space station is looking more and more like a cluttered attic.
7) "Room limited," is how the affable astronaut Mike Fincke describes it.
8) The problem is, shuttle deliveries and pickups won't resume until spring, and that's if NASA is lucky. A barrage of hurricanes and their devastating blow to NASA's launch site may well delay the next shuttle flight, by Discovery.
9) So the stuff will keep piling up and up.
10) "It's at the point where we have to figure out a way to handle it. You can't just wish it away. The garbage man isn't coming tomorrow to take everything away for you," says astronaut Kenneth Bowersox, who was the space station's skipper when shuttle Columbia went down.
11) Astronaut Michael Foale, another former space station commander, says even more important than what Discovery brings on that first flight will be what it takes away.
12) "It's essential that when that first shuttle comes up, before they do anything, is they start to clear out the items that we need to deliver back to Earth on the shuttle," Foale says.
13) During Foale's six-month station stay, which ended in April, the overcrowding slowed him down and began to affect his work.
14) "It's limiting our efficiency maybe by a percent or two, as we have to move some items out of the way when we get to a panel behind it," Foale says.
15) "But we are nowhere near as critical as I thought we were on space station Mir," adds the former Mir resident.
16) NASA takes little comfort in the fact that the 6-year-old space station isn't as dingy or messy as Russia's Mir, which tumbled from the sky in 2001 after 15 years of operation. The whole point, from the very beginning, was to avoid a pigpen in orbit. Yet here NASA is, on the verge of creating a mirror image of Mir.
17) "We're in a constrained situation right now," observes Suzan Voss, manager of NASA's cargo integration office. "But it's still a safe situation."
18) Columbia's catastrophic plunge from the sky on Feb. 1, 2003, grounded the shuttle fleet and halted all space station construction.
19) The Russian Space Agency has been sending manned capsules and supply ships to the station. The cargo carriers have provided backup stores of precious oxygen that have come in handy during the repeated breakdowns of the station's main oxygen generator, a vexing problem that eventually could force an evacuation. But the Russian spacecraft can hold, at most, only a third of what the shuttle can carry and they are not exactly frequent fliers.
20) Little can be returned to Earth in the capsules besides the astronauts themselves, and the cargo ships are cut loose and incinerated in the atmosphere. So only trash goes into the carriers before undocking _ empty food containers, dirty clothes, aluminum toilet cartridges full of solid waste.
21) During the Mir years, cosmonauts routinely dumped things overboard in bags. International accords frown on that now; the objects could become dangerous pieces of space junk.
22) The Russians made sure that wouldn't happen during September's spacewalk. The discarded antenna covers already have fallen harmlessly out of orbit, for instance, and the pump panel should plunge through the atmosphere in flames by year's end.
23) "Now if we were just desperate, that might be something that was done," Bowersox says, referring to large-scale dumping. "But we're not near that."
24) Among the bigger items taking up valuable space on the station until shuttles soar again: racks holding science experiments; broken exercise equipment and other machines; worn-out spacewalking suits; and more than a dozen rendezvous and docking devices in need of an engineering face-lift by the Russian Space Agency, which can no longer afford to keep making or buying new parts.
25) Among the smaller items: undeveloped rolls of IMAX film, tucked between water bags to protect against radiation; astronauts' personal belongings, like Bowersox's shirts with his crew insignia and the ugly slime-colored tie he wore when he needed cheering up; and duffel bags that once served as suitcases.
26) Everyone has had to be "very inventive" in making use of any so-called empty space, Voss says.
27) It's akin to organizing a jammed clothes closet, says station operations manager Mark Geyer, whose 11-year-old daughter's closet recently got a makeover with modular shelves and drawers.
28) "The only difference is you can't go to Home Depot and find the stuff. You've got to use what you have on board," Geyer says. "But the team has done a great job in looking in places that we wouldn't normally have examined."
29) As Bowersox sees it, the problem predates the Columbia accident.
30) "If you look at how this is happening, it's not because we all want a lot of clothes or we all want a lot of extra food up there or because we're being sloppy," says Bowersox, who now serves as director of NASA's flight crew operations.
31) "It's because we want a bunch of spare parts up there. We've got extra suits. We've got extra parts to repair the components outside the station, all these things that we're trying to pack aboard for contingency. And from the very beginning, we've kind of pushed it to the limit of what we wanted the crew to have to live with."
32) Many NASA officials, Bowersox included, wonder what will happen when the three remaining space shuttles are retired around 2010 to make way for President Bush's envisioned moon shots, and the station has to depend solely on unmanned supply ships. None of these vessels will be able to carry up all that a shuttle can, nor can they return anything to Earth.
33) Spare parts will have to be stockpiled on board, and that means even more crowding unless equipment can be kept outdoors or some kind of storage room can be launched and attached.
34) For their part, Fincke and cosmonaut Gennady Padalka are trying to tidy the place for their replacements, who are due to arrive in just over a week.
35) Fincke would love to toss out more, but as he told Mission Control back in June: "Always, always, always feel free to come back and say 'No, that is the most valuable thing on the planet, we can't throw it away.'"
36) Bowersox acknowledges that a neat freak would be, well, freaking out aboard the space station. But he adds with a laugh: "From what I've been seeing, the folks they've been sending up there, we don't really have a problem."


New Russian-U.S. crew sets off for international space station
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1) A new Russian-U.S. crew traveled toward the international space station Friday after surging into orbit aboard a Soyuz spacecraft none of the three astronauts has piloted before.
2) The Soyuz have been the only manned vehicles able to reach the orbiting research lab since the U.S. space shuttle fleet was grounded 20 months ago after the Columbia burned up on re-entry.
3) Russians Salizhan Sharipov and Yuri Shargin and American Leroy Chiao were flying their first mission in a Soyuz spacecraft _ a rare rupture with a tradition of having at least one crewman with previous experience in piloting the capsule.
4) Chiao and Sharipov both have flown U.S. space shuttles, while Shargin is a space rookie.
5) The Soyuz TMA-5 spacecraft lifted off as scheduled from the Baikonur cosmodrome in the bleak steppes of Kazakhstan at 7:06 a.m. Moscow time (0306GMT) on Thursday and entered orbit less than 10 minutes later.
6) The spaceship is to dock with the station at 8:17 a.m. (0417GMT) Saturday.
7) Since 1977, Soviet and Russian space crews have included a cosmonaut with previous pilot experience to ensure a smooth ride. The sole exception had been an all-rookie crew launched in 1994 until Thursday's launch.
8) Three Soyuz rookies had to be used again because several veteran cosmonauts have resigned in recent years and the space agency hasn't had enough seats on recent Soyuz missions to train their replacements.
9) Russian space officials have played down the lack of Soyuz experience.
10) "It's true it's their first time flying the Soyuz, but I don't see anything scary in that," Russian Mission Control chief Vladimir Solovyov said at the control center outside Moscow. "What's hardest is not what ship you're surrounded by but the surrounding, aggressive factors of space, and two of the crew members are already familiar with that."
11) NASA deputy administrator Fred Gregory, who came to Baikonur, said the launch actually underlined the first-time crew's competence in adapting.
12) "The countries have some excellent astronauts and cosmonauts, and when they are allowed to fly on the Soyuzes or the space shuttle these folks have the ability to adapt very quickly to that environment," he said. "Both countries have a great desire to maintain our presence in space and to do even bolder things."
13) Sharipov and Chiao "will work really well together," said U.S. astronaut Michael Foale in Baikonur. Foale returned in April after six months on the International Space Station.
14) Soyuz spacecraft are guided by autopilot on their approach to the station and during the docking, but the crew is trained to operate it manually in case of computer failure.
15) Gregory said the United States was looking for at "at least one more" station crew rotation in a Soyuz flight, tentatively set for April. He said NASA hopes to conduct its first post-Columbia shuttle flight around May.
16) Russian millionaire businessman Sergei Polonsky, who said he was ready to pay some US$20 million (euro16.16 million), was initially scheduled to join the crew. Polonsky was eventually jettisoned after officials said he was too tall for the tiny capsule.
17) Polonsky was replaced by Shargin, a Russian military officer who is to return to Earth in 10 days with the station's current crew, Russian Gennady Padalka and American Mike Fincke, who are ending a six-month mission.
18) The mission's launch was delayed twice _ first after the accidental detonation of an explosive bolt used to separate the ship's various components, and after a tank with hydrogen peroxide burst.
19) Yuri Semyonov, the head of the RKK Energia company, which built the Soyuz, said neither glitch could affect flight safety.
20) During the six-month mission, the new crew will do experiments to research new AIDS vaccines, study plant growth and go on at least two space walks.
21) A crucial task will be fixing a broken generator that makes oxygen from waste water to supplement oxygen delivered by cargo ships. Previous repair efforts have failed.


Russian Soyuz capsule carrying Russian-U.S. crew lands in Kazakh steppe
(APW_ENG_20041024.0025)
1) A Russian Soyuz capsule carrying a Russian-U.S. crew back to Earth following six months at the international space station hurtled through the Earth's atmosphere and landed early Sunday in the steppes of Kazakhstan.
2) The bell-shaped Soyuz TMA-4 carrying Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka and his American partner Mike Fincke touched down beneath a parachute at the targeted landing site, some 90 kilometers (55 miles) north of the town of Arkalyk, in pre-dawn darkness.
3) Russian and U.S. officials had waited alongside search helicopter crews for the first glimpse of the Soyuz re-entering the atmosphere after undocking from the station and making two orbits around the Earth. Other Russian rescue teams had been in position around the steppe, ready to move in by air and off-road convoys if necessary.
4) At Mission Control outside Moscow, where American and Russian space officials had gathered to monitor the landing, applause broke out at news of the landing.
5) The Soyuz crew had been in contact with helicopter crews as they made their final approach and reported that all were feeling well, Mission Control said.
6) Padalka and Fincke had been in space since April. Strapped in alongside them was Cosmonaut Yuri Shargin, who had spent eight days on the space station. Shargin arrived Oct. 16 along with the station's new crew, Salizhan Sharipov of Russia and Leroy Chiao of the United States.
7) Russia's non-reusable Soyuz has become the linchpin of the global community's manned space program, filling in for the U.S. shuttle fleet, grounded since Columbia burned up on re-entry in February 2003.
8) The Soyuz, the workhorse of Russia's cash-strapped space program, boasts a stellar safety record. But minor glitches have occurred on occasion.
9) Earlier this month, the crew arriving at the space station had to turn off the vessel's autopilot and manually connect the Soyuz to the docking point after an unidentified problem resulted in the craft approaching the station at a dangerously high speed.
10) In May 2003, the first time American astronauts returned on the Soyuz, a computer malfunction sent the crew on a dive so steep that the astronauts' tongues rolled back in their mouths. The crew landed so far off-target that more than two hours passed before rescuers knew the men were safe.
11) Now the Soyuz is outfitted with satellite phones and a global positioning satellite system. Russia also requests that the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan close off a large area of its airspace before the scheduled landing.
12) After landing, the crew is usually given a quick medical checkup before beginning the journey back to Moscow's Star City, the home-base of Russia's space program.


Glitch sends Soyuz off-course but it returns safely to Earth with Russians, Malaysian unhurt
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1) A technical glitch sent a Soyuz spacecraft on a wild ride home Sunday, forcing Malaysia's first space traveler and two Russian cosmonauts to endure eight times the force of gravity as their capsule hurtled back to Earth before landing safely, officials said.
2) All three were fine, with medical tests showing they were not injured during the steeper-than-usual descent, Russian Space Agency chief Anatoly Perminov said at a news conference at Mission Control in Korolyov, just outside Moscow.
3) He said space officials and experts had "a few tense moments" but the spacecraft landed safely with the crew in good condition.
4) "All crew members have been recovered and they are feeling quite well," he said.
5) The Soyuz -- with Russians Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov, and Malaysian Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor on board -- veered off-course and touched down at 1036GMT, short of the designated landing site, Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin said.
6) "That meant that the crew were subjected to higher than normal gravity load on their descent," he told The Associated Press.
7) Soyuz crews typically must bear four times the force of gravity when the spacecraft returns to Earth. But Lyndin said the glitch meant the crew was subjected to eight times the force of gravity.
8) Russian teams quickly located the craft, which landed just under 340 kilometers (about 210 miles) west of the designated landing site near Arkalyk in north-central Kazakhstan, NASA said on its Web site. It said all three crew members were feeling fine.
9) Alexei Krasnov, head of the Russian space agency's manned space programs, said an official commission would investigate the glitch.
10) "It's difficult to immediately name a specific reason behind the problem. We need to do an in-depth analysis," he said.
11) A similar problem occurred in May 2003 when the crew -- Russian cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin and American astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit -- also experienced a steep, off-course landing. It then took salvage crews several hours to locate the spacecraft because of communications problems.
12) Yurchikhin and Kotov were returning home after a six-month stint at the international space station. Sheikh Muszaphar had been at the orbital outpost since Oct. 12.
13) "This is a very momentous and historic occasion for Malaysia," Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak told reporters.
14) During about 10 days in space, Sheikh Muszaphar, a 35-year-old physician fulfilling his own dream of space travel and that of his country, performed experiments involving diseases and the effects of microgravity and space radiation on cells and genes.
15) "I am also very proud ... that finally we have joined the small number of nations that have sent their sons and daughters to space," Sheikh Muszaphar wrote in his Web journal before returning to Earth.
16) The US$25 million (euro18 million) agreement for a Malaysian astronaut to fly to space was negotiated in 2003 along with a US$900 million (euro635 million) deal for Malaysia to buy 18 Russian fighter jets.
17) Back at the space station, the remaining crew -- U.S. astronauts Peggy Whitson and Clayton Anderson, and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko -- monitored the progress of the Soyuz on its return journey.
18) Whitson, the station's first female commander, arrived along with Sheikh Muszaphar and Malenchenko on another Soyuz that lifted off from the Russian-leased launch facility in Kazakhstan Oct. 10.
19) She and Malenchenko are to spend six months in orbit, while Anderson -- aboard since June -- is to be replaced in the coming weeks by U.S. astronaut Daniel Tani, who is to arrive on the U.S. shuttle Discovery later this month.
20) The station's new crew is to perform space walks linked in part with efforts to expand the station, which is due to add a European Space Agency module and a Japanese module in the coming months.


Official: Soyuz capsule carrying South Korea ' s first astronaut lands off target in Kazakhstan
(APW_ENG_20080419.0226)
1) A Soyuz capsule carrying South Korea's first astronaut landed in northern Kazakhstan Saturday several hundred kilometers off-target, a Russian space official said.
2) The Russian TMA-11 craft's homing beacon was operating and search crews were en route to the site by helicopter and truck, Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin said.
3) The condition of the crew -- South Korean bioengineer Yi So-yeon, American astronaut Peggy Whitson and Russian flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko -- was still unclear, he said. However, Russian space officials, speaking in footage broadcast by the U.S. space agency NASA, said Malenchenko had reported the crew was fine.
4) The craft touched down around 0830 GMT some 420 kilometers (260 miles) off target -- a highly unusual distance given how precisely engineers plan for such landings, Lyndin said.
5) Officials said the craft may have followed a so-called "ballistic re-entry" -- a very steep course that submits the crew to sometimes severe physical forces.
6) It's the second landing in a row of a Soyuz capsule that has gone awry.
7) Last October, a technical glitch sent a Soyuz spacecraft carrying Malaysia's first space traveler and two Russian cosmonauts on a steeper-than-normal path during their return to Earth.
8) A similar problem occurred in May 2003 when the crew -- Russian cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin and American astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit -- also experienced a steep, off-course landing. It then took salvage crews several hours to locate the spacecraft because of communications problems.
9) Yi traveled to the station on April 10, along with cosmonauts Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko, who replaced Whitson and Malenchenko.
10) South Korea paid Russia US$20 million (euro12.7 million) for Yi's flight.
11) Whitson and Malenchenko spent roughly six months performing experiments and maintaining the orbiting station.
12) American astronaut Garrett Reisman, who arrived last month on the U.S. space shuttle Endeavour, is also on board the station.


Hatch of Soyuz capsule nearly burned up; crew was in serious danger
(APW_ENG_20080423.0016)
1) The crew of the Soyuz capsule that landed in Kazakhstan hundreds of kilometers (miles) off-target after an unexpectedly severe descent was in serious danger, a Russian news agency reported.
2) Interfax quoted an unidentified space official Tuesday as saying that the capsule entered the atmosphere improperly, with the hatch-first, instead of with its heat shields leading the way. As a result, the hatch suffered significant damage.
3) The official said the TMA-11 capsule's antenna burned up during the descent, meaning the crew couldn't communicate properly with Russian Mission Control. Also damaged was part of the valve that equalizes pressure inside and outside the capsule.
4) Interfax said the official was involved in the investigation into Saturday's landing.
5) The Soyuz crew included South Korea's first astronaut, Yi So-yeon, U.S. astronaut Peggy Whitson and Russian flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko.
6) "The fact that the entire crew ended up whole and undamaged is a great success. Everything could have turned out much worse," the official was quoted as saying. "You could say the situation was on a razor's edge."
7) NASA associate administrator for space operations William H. Gerstenmaier said the U.S. space agency was not aware of any danger for the crew although it did not ask if the crew was at risk.
8) "I don't see this as a major problem," Gerstenmaier told a Tuesday news teleconference in NASA's first comments about the landing. "But it's clearly something that should not have occurred."
9) Alexander Vorobyov, a spokesman for the Russian Federal Space Agency, confirmed that the descent had problems, saying that the Soyuz hatch and the antenna did suffer partial burn damage, but said that was a common occurrence when the capsules re-enter the Earth's atmosphere.
10) He said investigators looking into Saturday's landing had classified it as a "3" on the 5-point scale of seriousness, where "5" would be a critical level. Russian officials were still investigating what went wrong, he said.
11) The crew, which was returning from the international space station, endured severe gravitational forces because the craft took a steeper-than-usual re-entry, called a "ballistic trajectory." The capsule ended up landing some 420 kilometers, or 260 miles, off-target and 20 minutes late.
12) On Monday, Yi told a news conference at the Star City cosmonaut training center outside of Moscow that she was frightened by the descent.
13) "At first I was really scared because it looked really, really hot and I thought we could burn," she told reporters.
14) The incident was the second time in a row -- and the third since 2003 -- that a Soyuz landing had gone awry. The space official quoted by Interfax said that signaled problems with the Russian space program.
15) "Considering that this situation has repeated itself, it is obvious that the technological discipline in preparing space equipment for a flight is declining," the official was quoted as saying. "There is no guarantee that the crew of a Soyuz spacecraft landing a half a year from now would not face the same difficulties."
16) The Russians thought they had solved the descent problem after it cropped up last October and NASA agreed with their original analysis that a frayed wire was to blame, Gerstenmaier said.
17) However, the ship that landed Saturday was inspected in orbit and did not have frayed wiring, he said, acknowledging that the original investigation went wrong.
18) "We may have missed the probable cause," Gerstenmaier said.
19) Still, NASA is satisfied with the way Russia is handling the mishap and has not asked to be part of the investigation, he said.
20) "I have complete confidence in what the Russians are doing. They were very concerned about this," he said. "They treated this with the same diligence as we would in the United States."
21) But when NASA officials testify about the international space station on Thursday they will be grilled about the incident.
22) "I'm obviously concerned anytime a human space flight mission doesn't go as planned. We need to get more information about what happened and why, as well as what will be done to keep it from happening again," said House Science Committee Chairman Bart Gordon, a Tennessee Democrat.
23) Interfax quoted another unnamed official with the Baikonur cosmodrome -- the launch site in Kazakhstan for all Russia's manned missions -- as saying that the U.S. Defense Department tracked the Soyuz's off-target landing and pinpointed its location for Russian searchers.
24) Gerstenmaier, who was at Moscow Mission Control when the Soyuz landed off-course in Kazakhstan, relayed a little bit about what happened. After the landing, it took a half hour before Soyuz flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko called Moscow on a satellite phone to say they were OK. But no one was worried because it often takes an entire hour for this to occur, he said.
25) Malenchenko "detected some smoke in the cabin," Gerstenmaier said. Then the NASA official added that it was "maybe not smoke, but actually the smell of burning materials" and that is not uncommon.
26) The crew was subjected to gravity forces of about eight times Earth's gravity for up to two minutes, he said. Normal Soyuz returns have G-forces of about five, NASA said.
27) They felt "a kind of general jostling in their seats that they have not felt before," Gerstenmaier said.
28) The single-use Soyuz and Progress vehicles have long been the workhorses of the space station program, regularly shuttling people and cargo to the orbiting outpost.
29) They took on greater importance after the grounding of the U.S. space shuttle fleet in the wake of the 2003 Columbia disaster.
30) The NASA official emphasized how reliable Soyuz ships have been. It serves as the emergency escape ship for the international space station and will be NASA's only mode of space transport for several years after the 2010 scheduled retirement of the U.S. space shuttle fleet.
31) "We need not to overreact to this," Gerstenmaier said.


NASA sets May 31 for next shuttle launch, says Russian landing probe should not interfere
(APW_ENG_20080519.1271)
1) NASA has set May 31 for the next space shuttle launch and said that Russia's investigation into last month's rocky landing of its own spacecraft shouldn't interfere.
2) Senior NASA managers agreed Monday to proceed as planned with Discovery's two-week trip to deliver a Japanese lab to the international space station. A Russian Soyuz ship is always docked there as an emergency "lifeboat" in case the crew needs it.
3) But the last Soyuz that flew made an off-course, steeper-than-usual descent on April 19. One of the three astronauts returning in it ended up in the hospital with back pain. The Russian Space Agency is investigating what went wrong.
4) Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's space operations chief, said the Russians hope to wrap up the probe by the end of the month. Even if it's not complete before Discovery launches, officials believe the Soyuz at the space station is reliable in case of an emergency.
5) NASA astronaut Gregory Chamitoff is flying up on Discovery and is supposed to remain at the space station for six months. He will replace another American, Garrett Reisman, who was dropped off in March.
6) Gerstenmaier said there would be no benefit to delaying the shuttle mission to allow the Russians more time to figure out what went wrong with their Soyuz. It was the second flawed landing in a row for a Soyuz spacecraft.
7) Just in case, NASA has looked at what it would take to bring eight astronauts back in the shuttle instead of seven -- Chamitoff being No. 8 -- and would be prepared to do so, Gerstenmaier said. But he stressed that would be extremely unlikely.
8) There is only an estimated 1-in-124 chance that a Soyuz would need to be pressed into service as a lifeboat at the space station during any six-month period, Gerstenmaier said at a news conference. That makes the situation more acceptable, he said.
9) He added that the Russians have been asked to advise NASA "if they see anything that casts doubt on the Soyuz."
10) Still unknown, for NASA, is whether the Soyuz can be relied on for routine landings in Kazakhstan. An American is scheduled to blast into orbit aboard the next Soyuz in October.
11) Discovery and its crew of seven will deliver and install Japan's huge laboratory, Kibo, which means "hope." The first part of the lab -- essentially a closet full of experiment racks and other equipment -- was ferried up in March.
12) Liftoff on May 31 would be just after 5 p.m. (2100 GMT).


Astronauts geared for yuletide space adventure
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1) Astronauts from the United States, Russia and Japan are poised for their holiday season space mission Monday, when they are to blast off to the International Space Station from Russia's remote space complex in southern Kazakhstan.
2) Their Soyuz TMA-17 rocket is primed at the Baikonur launch pad -- where Yuri Gagarin made the first human trip into orbit in 1961 -- for a mission that will boost the number of crew at the orbital laboratory to five members.
3) American Timothy J. Creamer of NASA, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov and Soichi Noguchi of Japan are to blast off Monday at 3:52 a.m. local time (4:52 p.m. EST Sunday, 2152 GMT) in the first-ever launch of a Soyuz spaceship on a winter night.
4) After the liftoff in central Asia, the Soyuz will travel for about two days before docking with the space station 350 kilometers (220 miles) above Earth.
5) Striking a festive mood, the space station this week beamed a video Christmas greeting to Earth.
6) On its Web site, NASA has created a series of virtual postcards for members of the public to send to the space station with their holiday greetings.
7) The three astronauts will be joining Jeff Williams, another American NASA astronaut, and Russia's Maxim Surayev, who have been alone on the space station since the start of the month.
8) The first space station crew arrived in 2000, two years after the first part was launched. Until the May launch, no more than three people lived up there at a time. Prior to that, there were as many as six people aboard for several periods when a space tourist would go up with one crew, spend a week or so aboard and come back with another crew.
9) With the U.S. shuttle fleet set to be grounded soon, NASA and other international partners will have to rely on Russian Soyuz spacecraft alone to ferry their astronauts to the space station and back.


Russia ' s Soyuz soon to be only lifeline to space
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1) As a Soyuz spacecraft slowly rolls to its launchpad on the icy cold steppes of Kazakhstan, even the most seasoned space fan cannot help but be spellbound by the sight.
2) With NASA finally retiring the shuttle program next year, the venerable Russian workhorse is now set to become the world's only lifeline to the International Space Station. That predicament is provoking mixed feelings of concern over excess reliance on Russia's space program and enduring admiration for the hardiness of the Soviet-designed Soyuz.
3) "The vehicle is a rugged 'one trick pony,' no frills or luxuries, and can take any licking and keep on ticking," said James Oberg, a veteran of NASA Space Shuttle Mission Control in Houston.
4) The next Soyuz mission begins Thursday, when NASA astronaut Catherine Coleman, Russian cosmonaut Dmitry Kondratyev and European Space Agency's Paolo Nespoli of Italy lift off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in southern Kazakhstan.
5) In a procedure polished over more than four decades of Soyuz launches, the carrier rocket was horizontally rolled out of its hangar on a flatbed train at 7 a.m. local time Monday and carefully carried to the blastoff site in the winter darkness.
6) In contrast to NASA's distinctive winged shuttle, which is reusable albeit exorbitantly expensive to operate, the Soyuz can only be used once. It is a relatively streamlined craft consisting of a tiny capsule sitting atop powerful booster rockets.
7) The name, which comes from the Russian word for "union," was both a tribute to its Soviet design and a reference to the Soyuz's ability to dock with other modules. That detail was an absolute must even to begin thinking about long-term space missions or possible travel beyond the Earth's orbit.
8) Whereas the shuttle's viability has been hamstrung by countless delays, the last time a Soyuz launch was postponed was as far back as 1971.
9) Yet for all its trustworthiness, the first Soyuz launch in April 1967 ended in tragedy when Col. Vladimir Komarov, the sole cosmonaut onboard, died on re-entry.
10) Soviet authorities had grown alarmed at U.S. strides in the space race and had pushed for hasty deployment of the Soyuz before the United States could get its Apollo rocket off the ground.
11) That Soyuz disaster led to an immediate postponement of manned flights and injected a new spirit of caution into the Soviet space program. A minute attention to detail, most evident in Russian space officials' obsession with running operations on a timetable counted in seconds, has earned the Soyuz a well-deserved reputation for safety.
12) "My biggest dream in life has always been to fly in orbit someday, but I can tell you that I would feel a hell of a lot more at ease in a Soyuz than in a shuttle," space historian Bert Vis said.
13) Despite such oft-heard endorsements, a clutch of incidents in recent years has aroused concern. Most notably, problems with the Soyuz capsule's service module during a landing in April 2008 caused a perilously steep re-entry trajectory, which placed crushing gravitational pressure on its three-person crew.
14) Ahead of watching the Soyuz being winched into place at the launchpad Monday, NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who traveled onboard that capsule, said the luxuries afforded by the shuttle would indeed be missed.
15) "The Soyuz is kind of a gentler launch, but I'd much rather land in a shuttle, because it's much more civilized," Whitson said.
16) Critics also complain that by leaving themselves so heavily reliant on the Soyuz, the United States could fall victim to costly price gouging at the hands of Russian space authorities.
17) "Moscow already uses it for leverage and has raised the price to NASA repeatedly over the years, to $50 million now," said Brian Harvey, an expert on the history of the Russian space program. "But a shuttle launch costs $550 million a go, so it's still good value."
18) And while the Russian space program is set to enjoy almost a complete monopoly on ferrying people to space for the next few years, things might change. The successful test launch last week of a privately developed rocket from Cape Canaveral is a clear example of how the market could breed viable space competitors.
19) "If new, commercially developed space transportation systems in the West leapfrog the tried-and-true Russian booster stable in the next decade, Russia will be left with no significant capability of interest to foreign customers," Oberg said.
20) The politics and economics of space travel is usually far from astronauts' minds, however, and while in Baikonur, most relish the pleasure of witnessing the ingenuity that goes into assembling the rockets.
21) "It was Michelangelo that said the sculpture was always inside the rock, I just have to take away the unnecessary pieces. The Soyuz is one of those sculptures," said Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who plans to fly to the International Space Station onboard a Soyuz spacecraft in 2012.