Avi Blizovsky
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The next crew members of the International Space Station will take off in about two months in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, but they do not yet know how they will return - whether in the spacecraft they are taking off with or perhaps in a space shuttle.
"People say it's not smart to go into space one way, but we'll always have the option of coming back on the Soyuz with Leopard," said Michael Powell, commander of Crew 8 of the International Space Station, at a press conference held Thursday, August 14, 2003, at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Powell and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Cleary will spend more than six months in space after their October 18 launch from Kazakhstan. Until their return in April 2004, NASA may resume the space shuttle flights, which have been grounded since the Columbia disaster.
NASA now relies on Russian spacecraft to deliver food and supplies to space station crew members. The agency now hopes to resume shuttle flights between March 11 and April 6.
The Spanish astronaut Pedro Duca, representing the European Space Agency, will take off with crew members 8, stay eight days at the space station and then return with members of the current crew - the seventh: Edward Lu and the cosmonaut who got married in space Yuri Melanchenko.
The crew of the space station was reduced from three to two after the Columbia disaster because the Soyuz spacecraft could not carry enough supplies and food like the shuttle. Powell said he and Clary plan to conduct 15 science experiments and have been training for two-man spacewalks. So far spacewalks have only been carried out when two would go out and one would stay inside the station to supervise them.
"We were worried that without a shuttle we wouldn't be able to do much," said Powell, "As it turns out, we have a tremendous amount of equipment and we can use it to perform several experiments."
Duka, who will return to the Soyuz with which the current team members took off, said that he is not afraid of a repeat of the previous landing of the Soyuz that took place about 500 kilometers from the destination in Kazakhstan. All future Soyuz will carry GPS equipment. said.
The three said that the Columbia disaster did not change their determination to go into space. "It just brings awareness to the fact that space flight is dangerous," Duka said, "but we're still going. We trust engineers and ground crews."
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Yadan International Space Station
NASA hopes to resume manned flights in the spring of 2004
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