CAPE CANAVERAL - A balky Russian oxygen generator
broke down on the International Space Station, but its two-man crew has a
reserve air supply that would last about five months, NASA officials said
Friday.
The station's primary
generator, which has been operating in an on-again, off-again fashion for
months, stopped working last week and the station's crew has not been able to
fix it.
Mission managers say the unit has failed
for good. Consequently, Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev and U.S. astronaut John Phillips will be relying on reserves until replacement parts arrive at
the station in late August.
Kylie Clem, a spokeswoman
for NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, said the reserves would last well
beyond the scheduled mid-June arrival at the station of a Russian space
freighter with additional supplies.
As it stands, oxygen
supplies in a Progress cargo carrier now at the outpost will last until May 22
or May 23.
The crew also is equipped
with oxygen generators that work like drop-down emergency air supplies on
commercial airliners. Supplies from those would last until early July. Beyond
that, there is a 100-day oxygen supply in tanks attached to the station U.S.
Quest airlock.
Total air supply now onboard:
About 140 days.
Krikalev and Phillips
comprise the fifth two-person crew to live and work on the station since the
February 2003 Columbia accident grounded NASA's shuttle fleet, cutting off a
key supply line to the outpost.
NASA and its 15
international partners since then have been relying solely on Russian
spacecraft to haul crews and cargo to and from the station.
The shuttle fleet now is
expected to be back in service in mid-July.
Krikalev and Phillips are
in the midst of a six-month tour of duty on the half-built station, which is a
joint project of the U.S., Russia, Europe, Japan, Canada and Brazil.
The two launched from
Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on April 14, arrived at the station two days
later and are due back on Earth on Oct. 7.
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