| NASA refuses to increase the duration of orbital missions The US National Aerospace Agency yesterday seriously complicated the lives of its Russian colleagues who were planning to patch up the space industry budget through commercial projects. NASA leaders said they are not currently ready to change the work schedule on the ISS from six-month missions to year-long missions in orbit. The Russian Federal Space Agency (formerly Rosaviakosmos) planned, by increasing the timing, to free up “extra” space for space tourists on ships delivering crews to the ISS, the flight of each of whom brings in about $20 million. According to our experts, a year in in space is a completely normal period, and the practice of flights at the Mir and Salyut orbital stations has proven this.
However, NASA has not yet decided to do this. US space agency spokeswoman Debi Rahn said: “The station is currently staffed by a limited staff of two astronauts, so we do not have sufficient countermeasures (either technical or medical) to offset the impact of long flights on the crew.” However, the head of the FKA press service, Sergei Gorbunov, believes that the issue is not yet completely closed and the Russians will still be able to persuade NASA. According to him, the Americans are not ready to make such a decision now, “but this does not mean that they have abandoned it completely.”
Apparently, Americans are primarily concerned about medical problems: whatever you say, living a year in zero gravity on a small station is difficult even for a trained person. FKA seems to be ready to overcome these difficulties for the sake of the survival of the domestic space exploration program. After the crash of the Columbia shuttle and the suspension of the shuttle program, work on the ISS is supported exclusively by our Soyuz and Progress. Three-seat Soyuz spacecraft deliver a permanent Russian-American expedition of two people and a “guest” - an astronaut from the European Space Agency - to the ISS every six months. If permanent expeditions changed less frequently, there would be room on the ship for a wealthy “cosmotourist.” But NASA is understandably more concerned about the health of its astronauts than the financial problems of the Russian cosmonautics. Vladimir DZAGUTO |
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