With food stores running low, the two
astronauts living aboard the International Space Station (ISS) are cutting back
their meal intake and awaiting a critical cargo delivery expected to arrive
on Dec. 25.
ISS Expedition 10 commander Leroy Chiao and flight
engineer Salizhan Sharipov are scaling down their daily caloric intake by up to
10 percent, but will meet their daily nutritional requirements
and should not experience any discomfort, NASA space station
officials said today. Current food supplies will hit critical just
as the resupply ship is due, with water supplies lasting through
Jan. 18, they added.
"We knew our situation was tight and we continue to
monitor those consumables closely," said William Gerstenmaier, NASA ISS program
manager, during a briefing with reporters. "This crew has not been eating excessively
in any shape or form."
Chiao and Sharipov arrived at the station aboard
their Soyuz capsule on Oct. 16 and have spent nearly two months onboard the
orbital platform. A Russian-built cargo spacecraft, Progress
16, was originally slated to haul fresh food, water and
other supplies to the station last month, but delayed until late
December. The supply ship is now set to launch from Baikonur
Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Dec. 23 and dock with the ISS two days
later.
"This 16 Progress is very critical, no doubt about
that, but not any more critical than the last Progress or when we launched the
last Soyuz," Gerstenmaier said. "We kind of launched into
this situation with the idea of what we were going to do, and we have
teams tracking this all the time."
The Expedition 10 crew has entered a 45-day period
known as a skip cycle by ISS managers, who have begun drawing up
plans to evacuate the space station should the Progress 16 resupply flight
fail or suffer delay. The space station will only have 7-14 days of food
remaining when Progress 16 is expected to arrive, during which time they
would have to return home if the 107-day supply of food doesn't
arrive.
"We have to be ready," Gerstenmaier said of
evacuating the crew, adding that ISS controllers were similarly prepared during
Expedition 10's recent Soyuz relocation maneuver should they're spacecraft fail
to dock properly with the station. "We were fully prepared to return the crew
then too."
Counting calories and
pounds
On the average, ISS astronauts consume about
3,000 calories during any given day in space. Under the current plan,
Chiao and Sharipov will scale down to about 2,700 calories at
most.
"It is well within the optimal and nutritional
guidelines that they follow," explained Sean Roden, Expedition 10 flight
surgeon, during the briefing.
Space station meals come in individual packages that
cannot be separated into smaller portions and saved for
later, Roden said. But the crew can manage their meals
by cutting out a whole package depending on their appetite,
he added.
Space station managers said they would not swap out
12 pounds (5.4 kilograms) of new science experiments and equipment to fly aboard
Progress 16 for additional food, though the spacecraft will already carry
seven extra food containers, according to a Florida Today report.
"We're not just staying on-station to stay on-station
in survival mode," Gerstenmaier said. "We want them to have food and water and
science to do."
If the Expedition 10 crew does have to evacuate the
ISS, the facility would be configured much like it is during a two-person
spacewalk or Soyuz relocation.
Chiao and Sharipov would power down computers, set
flight controls to be handled by the ground and close the hatches behind them as
they boarded their Soyuz spacecraft and returned to Earth, said Expedition 10
flight director Annette Hasbrook, adding that the astronauts may clean out
filters more than usual should the station be left uncrewed for an extended
time.
The shuttle advantage
Much of the station's supply stem from a lack of
ISS-bound space shuttle flights, which have more room for cargo than Russia's
Soyuz spacecraft. NASA's space shuttle fleet has been grounded since the Feb. 1,
2003, when the shuttle Columbia broke up during reentry
killing its seven-astronaut crew.
"The shuttle gives you a lot more degrees of freedom
and a lot more variability with cargo," Gerstenmaier said, adding that ISS
controllers have learned how to stretch their capabilities to operate the
station without frequent shuttle flights. "We're really ready for when the
shuttle comes, or if the shuttle doesn't come."
The next space shuttle flight, STS-114
Discovery, is currently expected to launch in May 2005.
"It's been a tremendous balancing act,"
Gerstenmaier said. "But it's not much different than what's going to have
to be done for the exploration era where you'll be much farther from home.
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