CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The three Expedition Six crewmembers aboard the International Space Station (ISS) say they are doing fine, and though they are saddened at the loss of their colleagues on Columbia, they are prepared to stay in space as long as it takes to get shuttles flying again.
"The folks on the ground have been real good about reducing our schedule and we've had time to grieve our friends, and that was very important," station skipper Ken Bowersox said Tuesday during a space to ground news conference.
"When you're up here this long you can't just bottle up your emotions and focus all the time. I mean, it's important for us to acknowledge that the people on STS-107 were our friends, that we had a connection with them and that we feel their loss. And each of us had a chance to shed some tears," Bowersox said.
"But now it's time to move forward, and we're doing that slowly."
Launched into orbit aboard Endeavour last November, Bowersox along with science officer Don Pettit and Soyuz commander Nikolai Budarin were scheduled to be returned to Earth aboard shuttle Atlantis in March.
With the loss Feb. 1 of Columbia and its seven-member crew, space station program are now considering their options and no decisions have been made yet as to what to do with the Expedition Six crew as the investigation into the shuttle tragedy continues.
The earliest they could come home would be in early May after a fresh Soyuz spacecraft is launched with a new crew.
Under that scenario the new Soyuz would dock with the station and that crew would remain on the outpost, while the Expedition Six crew would then fly home in the Soyuz lifeboat that is currently docked with the ISS.
It's also possible the Expedition Six crew would remain in space until the shuttle program started flying again, or perhaps a crew swap out would take place in October when the next Soyuz spacecraft is scheduled for launch.
Bowersox didn't specifically say which option he preferred, but made it clear he and his crew are willing to remain in space for as long as needed.
"We are enjoying our mission up here. We enjoy the environment on the space station. And we are going to enjoy the next two and half to three months here," the veteran astronaut said.
"So the extra stay is not something that we consider a negative. In fact, for us it's positive. We actually volunteered to stay longer. We've told our management that if they need us to stay a year, that's fine, they've got blanket approval for that. If they want us to go longer than a year, please just give us a couple of month's notice," Bowersox said.
One of the options being considered is to send a two-person crew up on the next Soyuz -- now targeted to launch April 26 -- and leave them on the station until the next shuttle mission or the October Soyuz launch, whichever comes first.
While having just two people on board would help conserve resources, especially water, the amount of any productive science work they could get done would be minimal. But science officer Pettit didn't seem too bothered by that.
"If two people were up here they'd be real busy just maintaining the systems on space station. However, there would be time to do some level of research. By virtue of having people (on the station) you're always doing research on your body itself, looking at the effects of long duration weightlessness on the human physiology," Pettit said.
Crew morale, however, has been the chief concern during the past 10 days and it would seem the crew is coping well.
"We've been getting lots of information and we've been feeling like we've been very well in the loop with what's going on down on the ground. Here on the station our emotions tend to be a little bit amplified. So when we read some of the information we'll feel a stronger response than we might have felt on the ground. But as time goes on that seems to subside a little bit, and we move on with our everyday work," Bowersox said.
Pettit said he has found moments and places on the station to be alone, which have been helpful to him.
Bowersox remembers his feelings on Feb. 1 when the Johnson Space Center director came on the radio to inform the station crew of Columbia's loss.
"My first reaction was pure shock, I was numb and it was hard to believe that what we were experiencing was really happening," Bowersox said.
Pettit couldn't believe it at first, either. He said that when it became clear there were no survivors "that's when the magnitude of the event really hit me."
"I had always imagined the launch phase to be the dangerous part with the pucker power to it. Now it's made me rethink that all that energy that those big boosters put into you on launch has to be taken out by the atmosphere when you re-enter, and that's a lot of energy as we are so patently are aware of now. It just made these things a little clearer in my mind in terms of where the risks really are," Pettit said.
The station crew said they took time to listen to the memorial service held at the Johnson Space Center as it happened and then the station crew conducted their own remembrance, Bowersox said.
"At the conclusion of that memorial service, after the bells had rung on the ground and the T-38's had flown by, it was very quiet on board and we rang our ship's bell seven times. At that point it was very, very quiet onboard the International Space Station. We spent 15 or 20 minutes in silence, and then we moved on. We had work to do."
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