| President Bush allowed NASA to buy a return ticket for an astronaut George W. Bush put an end to the debate about whether the US National Aeronautics Agency can pay for astronaut flights on Soyuz spacecraft, as well as purchase the necessary know-how from Russian space industry enterprises. On Tuesday evening, the US President signed amendments to the so-called act on the non-proliferation of missile and nuclear technologies to Iran, adopted by Congress back in 2000. This document, adopted under pressure from Republicans who suspected Russian companies of secretly supplying Tehran with missile technology, essentially blocked any commercial cooperation between NASA and Roscosmos and leading domestic aerospace enterprises. However, Congress was forced to reconsider its principles when it became clear that the “anti-Iran act” could complicate the development of the International Space Station as a whole and make it difficult for William McCarthur, now on board, to return to Earth from orbit. With his autograph, President Bush essentially guaranteed him a paid seat on the Soyuz spacecraft, which will return the crew of Expedition 12 from the ISS in the spring.
Russia, which considers its obligations under the project to its overseas partners to have already been fulfilled, has long and persistently demanded a revision of the initial calculations. NASA leaders, who suspended space shuttle flights after the Columbia disaster, were forced to recognize the Russian Soyuz and Progress spacecraft as the main means of delivering cargo to the ISS. However, negotiations on continuing cooperation on a commercial basis and on new terms of mutual offsets were complicated by the actual ban by Congress on financing the services of Russian companies necessary for the American agency. The changes to the nonproliferation act should give new impetus to the negotiations, which will resume next week. In any case, that’s what the head of Roscosmos’ manned programs department, Alexey Krasnov, hopes. And, in addition, NASA will have the opportunity for broader cooperation with Russian colleagues - the amendments signed by George W. Bush remove restrictions on all bilateral agreements and contracts until January 1, 2012.
In turn, NASA Director Michael Griffin has already assured the Americans that the possibility of commercial interaction with Russian space industry enterprises will make it possible to “guarantee the continuous presence of American astronauts on the ISS.” And at the same time it will give a reprieve to agency experts who still cannot establish the true causes of the problems that destroyed the Columbia shuttle and caused worries on the ground during the “test” flight of the Discovery spacecraft this summer. After spending two and a half years and $205 million studying problems with the insulating lining of fuel tanks, NASA engineers cannot yet guarantee 100% safety of the next shuttle flight. And without this, the relaunch of Discovery, originally planned for the spring, is called into question. "We haven't set an exact launch date yet," space shuttle program manager Wayne Hale said yesterday, emphasizing that NASA will not allow itself to "do something stupid just because it needs to meet some schedule." Fedor SEREBRYANSKY |
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