The Hindu : Russia sends new crew to space station

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Oct 19, 2003

International

International

Russia sends new crew to space station

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW OCT. 18.

Russia has successfully launched a spaceship with a multinational crew to the International Space Station amid growing problems of having to fund the project single-handed.

A Soyuz TMA-3 spacecraft carrying a Russian, American and Spanish space pilots took off from the Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan on a sunny Saturday morning in a flawless launch broadcast live by international television networks. After a two-day ride the spacecraft is due to link up with the ISS on Monday.

The Russian cosmonaut, Alexander Kaleri, and the American astronaut, Michael Foale, will replace the Russian-American crew of Yuri Malenchenko and Ed Lu for a six-month rotation stay aboard the ISS. The Spanish pilot, Pedro Duque, will accompany them for a 10-day mission on behalf of the European Space Agency and return to Earth with the outgoing crew. It is the sixth space flight for the Russian and the American and the second for the Spaniard. This is also the first all-civilian crew to the ISS in the nearly four-year history of its manned flight.

Russian Soyuz and Progress spacecraft have been the only means of sending up cosmonauts and servicing the station since the U.S. suspended space shuttle flights indefinitely in the wake of Colombia disaster in February. The Soyuz craft has served as Russia's main space workhorse for more than three decades now, and its modified version was used by China to put its first man in space earlier this week.

Following the grounding of the U.S. manned flights Russia has scrambled to build twice as many spacecraft to keep the ISS programme going. The effort has overstretched Russia's limited space budget, causing delays in the tight ISS flight schedule. An unmanned Progress flight which was to take supplies to the ISS in November has now been postponed this early next year.

Hard-pressed for funds Russia has suspended the construction of new modules to fill its 30-per cent share in the ISS and lobbied the U.S. and other partners in the 16-nation project to provide additional funds to help cope with increased space flight load.

Washington has refused citing the Iran Non-proliferation Act (INA), which prohibits U.S. funding for the Russian space programme because of Moscow's suspected supply of nuclear weapon technologies to Teheran. Neither Japan nor the European Space Agency has agreed to provide funds either.

This has fuelled Russia's suspicion that its partners are being guided by ulterior motives of grabbing its ISS space quota. According to the Russian space chief, Yuri Koptev, unless Russia completes the construction of its ISS segment by early 2008 its share may be divided among the U.S., Japan and European Space Agency.

"Nobody cares whether there will or will not be new Russian modules built," Mr. Koptev complained earlier this year. "The only thing the Americans, the Europeans and the Japanese care about is that Russia keeps the station afloat."

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