WASHINGTON
— NASA Administrator Mike Griffin asked U.S. lawmakers Feb. 13 to pass legislation
this year permitting the U.S. space agency to buy Soyuz flights from Russia
beyond 2011 to deliver crews to and from the international space station.
Congress
in 2005 granted NASA relief from a non-proliferation law — the Iran-North
Korea-Syria Non-Proliferation Act —that bars so-called extraordinary payments
to the Russian space agency for goods and services related to human
spaceflight, but that waiver expires at the end of 2011.
Appearing
before the House Science and Technology Committee to defend the space agency's 2009 budget
request, Griffin said he expects NASA will continue to rely on Russian
Soyuz capsules beyond 2011 for space station crew transport. Soyuz also serves
as the space station's emergency crew lifeboat.
"Thus
given existing legislative restrictions we will require explicit authorization
by the Congress to make further extraordinary payments to Russia in order to
provide crew transport on Soyuz to the station after 2011 for our astronauts as
well as for those of our international partners to whom we have
obligations," Griffin said. "NASA needs this legislative
authorization in 2008 because Russia requires 36-months lead time to fabricate
new Soyuz vehicles and thus we need to finalize contractual agreements late
this year if we expect to fly in the spring of 2012."
NASA
already has signed
contracts totaling $780 million for Russian Soyuz capsules and Progress
cargo vessels through 2011. That contract will be funded at least in part out
of the $2.6 billion NASA has budgeted through 2013 for space station crew and cargo
transportation services.
"I
would prefer to use as much of that as possible to buy transportation services
from American commercial companies rather than foreign entities," Griffin
said. "However, while I believe that we will have U.S. commercial cargo
transport services over the next few years along with European and Japanese
capability, it is my carefully considered assessment that U.S. commercial crew
transport vehicles will not likely be available by 2012. The prospective
purveyors of such services of course claim otherwise and actually I wish them
all possible success. No one hopes more than I that they are right and I am
wrong. But our ability to sustain the station cannot be held hostage to
hope."
Rep.
Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.), chairman of the committee, told Griffin that Congress
would be unlikely to move forward with any requested waiver until it received a
formal legislative proposal from the White House.
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