CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A Russian plan to send a wealthy space tourist to the International Space Station this spring hit a major stumbling block Tuesday as NASA officials raised concerns about the potential for interrupting critical assembly work at the growing outpost.
Less than two months before the planned April 30 launch of U.S. millionaire Dennis Tito on a Russian Soyuz taxi flight to the station, NASA officials told Russian counterparts that the timing was not right for a civilian visit to the station.
The taxi flight will unfold as a resident crew aboard the station is attempting to activate a Canadian-built robot arm that will play a critical role in all future construction at the outpost.
"We told them that we had significant concerns about that," said Michael Hawes, NASA's deputy associate administrator for the International Space Station project at the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C. "It's actually a high-stress time onboard."
The 57-foot (17-meter) robot arm must be working properly before a visiting shuttle crew can bring up an airlock to cap the second phase of station construction in June.
Future spacewalking assembly and maintenance work outside the station will be staged from the specially designed chamber.NASA's concerns with the timing of Tito's flight were raised during multilateral negotiations aimed at developing a firm set of training and medical criteria that would have to be met by any civilian flying to the international station.
A panel of U.S. and Russian negotiators came up with a draft set of criteria during meetings last week at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
Those recommendations were among topics discussed here at Kennedy Space Center Tuesday by a larger group that included representatives from other station project partners, namely Europe, Japan and Canada.
The Russian Aviation and Space Agency, also known as Rosaviakosmos, raised the issue of flying civilians to the station earlier this year.
Rosaviakosmos wants to fill empty third seats on station-bound Soyuz spacecraft and signed a $20 million contract in January to fly Tito -- a California investment manager and former NASA engineer -- on the first of what will be semi-annual taxi flights to the outpost.
Hawes said all parties involved in the 16-nation station project agreed in principal last fall to investigate the possibility of flying civilians to the outpost on a commercial basis.
And once all parties agree on training and medical criteria as well as other issues such as legal liabilities, Hawes said, "it's highly likely that civilians can fly to the International Space Station."
That process, however, still is expected to take another week to 10 days - timing which would make it difficult for Tito to finish training requirements before the April 30 flight.
The next Russian Soyuz taxi flight to the international station is scheduled for launch in October.
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