Truss but verify

"We're continuing the dialogue," said Ian Pryke, head of ESA's Washington, D.C. office.

A round of program coordinating committee meetings between NASA and the ISS partners were recently held. Also, a multilateral control board meeting is slated for this week. Lastly, all the agency heads engaged in the ISS are gathering, a confab likely to occur in early June, Pryke said.

STS-110

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"Where the space station is going beyond what the United States likes to refer as core complete is a major issue," Pryke said. "Discussions continue among the partners so we can find a satisfactory resolution of all the matters," he said.

Those bilateral and multilateral discussions between NASA and the international partners have two purposes, observes John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Logsdon told SPACE.com the first reason is to keep the partners fully informed as to the steps NASA is taking to restore agency credibility with the Bush White House about the ISS program. If a trustworthiness level can be attained, the U.S. space agency would "earn the go-ahead" to proceed beyond core complete, he said.

Beyond core complete

NASA talks with the ISS partners also deal with another dynamic, Logsdon said. And that is to start defining technical and program options for giving the space station "enhanced capability" beyond core complete. Doing so allows the partners to prepare for moving forward when permission to do so is issued, he said.

"The international partners have come to understand NASA's situation, but each also has problems with its government, or governments in the case for the European Space Agency," Logsdon said. "So there is continuing unhappiness about the situation coupled with pressure on the U.S. government to commit to a full capability station," he said.

Marcia Smith, a space policy analyst for the Congressional Research Service, said the Bush Administration defines ISS core complete as including the European and Japanese modules, as well as the Japan-supplied centrifuge, even though that major hardware won't show up for years to come.

Everyone is waiting to see what cost-estimates are forthcoming from NASA, an assessment that should be finalized by this fall, Smith said. "They need to know that before they say anything about the future of the station," she said.

Smith said that NASA, Congress and the international partners all have their respective deadlines for decision making. "Everybody is really in a time bind waiting for some sort of signal from NASA or the White House as to where all this is going," she said.

REMAP science output

Meanwhile, just how the ISS can best be used for research purposes is also undergoing a shakeout.

Late last month, NASA's O'Keefe established an independent blue ribbon group that will tackle research priorities for the ISS.

The name of that group says it all: Research Maximization and Prioritization Task Force, or REMAP in NASA short speak. One REMAP top agenda item is to look across the space agency's Office of Biological and Physical Research work.

An outcome of REMAP, according to NASA, is to provide "importance guidance" on how to maximize the scientific returns from the ISS.

Mary Kicza, newly appointed by O'Keefe to run the agency's Office of Biological and Physical Research office, said REMAP "will literally help set the bar for NASA's future science and research efforts on the International Space Station."

Furthermore, the task force will help the non-U.S. partners in the project "realize the full potential" of the orbiting research outpost, she said.

Logsdon said that, with all the attention to the international issues of the space station, people should not forget that the U.S. laboratory, Destiny, is up and operating.

"There is substantial science capability about the ISS," Logsdon said. "The issue is finding a way to maximize its utilization. But there is science being done, and more to come before the international laboratories arrive two to three years from now," he said.