NASA
managers are considering suspending U.S. research aboard the International Space
Station (ISS) next year in order to save money for the orbital laboratory's
construction, a top program manager said Thursday.
Kirk
Shireman, deputy director of NASA's ISS program at Johnson Space Center (JSC),
said dropping science research during the 2007 fiscal year
is one of several options on the table to make up for a funding shortfall of up
to $100 million.
"Right now
we're quite a bit in the hole," Shireman told reporters during a Thursday ISS mission
briefing at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. "We'll look at a
bunch of different options for the assembly budget; all those things are under
consideration."
NASA is
preparing its shuttle
Atlantis to launch toward the ISS next month in the first of at least 15
flights to complete construction of the half-built
space station by September 2010, when the agency's three-orbiter fleet is
retired. Atlantis' STS-115
mission will deliver a 17-ton truss
segment and new solar arrays to the $100 billion orbital laboratory.
The future
of space station science has come under close
scrutiny after NASA officials were forced to divert funds from its science
and exploration coffers to make up for an then-expected $4 billion shortfall to
complete the ISS and retire the shuttle program.
The
National Research Council has issued several reports
citing the need for more ISS science and larger station crews in order to bring
the orbital laboratory up to its full potential. The potential drop in U.S.
science aboard the ISS was first reported by the website NASAwatch.com.
Space
station crew sizes were reduced
to two-astronaut teams following the 2003 Columbia accident, but
returned to their three-person status earlier this month when European Space
Agency (ESA) astronaut Thomas
Reiter joined Expedition
13 commander Pavel
Vinogradov and flight engineer Jeffrey Williams
during NASA's
STS-121 shuttle mission.
"The ISS
has severe budgetary limitations next year," Shireman said, adding later that
the station program is looking beyond its own resources for assistance. "We're
working very hard not only within the program, but with headquarters as well to
balance it out."
Shireman
said no final decisions have been made, but remained optimistic that the end
result would be positive.
"I'm
confident that we'll come out with options and a plan to go forward that will
be satisfactory for the ISS program and for NASA and the taxpayers as a whole,"
Shireman said.
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