CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Russia is ready to add its third piece to Space Station Alpha.
The section is a combination airlock and spacecraft docking area whose construction was delayed while the Russians gathered money for the work. The Russian Aviation and Space Agency is grappling with a total budget of about $100 million -- about one-fifth the cost of a shuttle launch.
NASA waited more than two years for Russia's last component, the complex Zvezda service module. Zvezda provides crucial life support systems and living quarters.
But station ground controllers in Houston have taken the delays in stride, not planning for the new module's arrival until its completion.
For example, the first resident crew of the station trained for a spacewalk to move a docking apparatus into place. As the new module suffered delay after delay, the spacewalk also was put off.
Now, the second space station commander, cosmonaut Yuri Usachev, and astronaut Jim Voss are getting ready to perform the work.
The maneuver requires the pair, watched over by station astronaut Susan Helms, wear spacesuits, but they will not leave the confines of the station. Instead, they will crawl around inside a spherical transfer compartment in the Zvezda module.
Within 30 to 40 minutes, the pair will unlatch a cone-shaped plate and move it to an Earth-facing port. The device will aid in the connection of the docking compartment to the station.
"It's a fairly standard thing that's done on Russian vehicles," NASA Flight Director Bob Castle said.
The spacewalk will be the first of dozens of such activities over the life of the station requiring station crews to repair and replace aging components.
Given Russia's economic status, some doubt that more Russian-built pieces will ever make it into space. Russian engineers and scientists have to work second jobs to pay their bills, and many don't get paychecks regularly.
But while such concerns frustrated NASA managers on the Russian life-support and living module, they are not as worried about other Russian components.
Space station construction could not go ahead without Zvezda in place. But the docking compartment is important only to the Russian segment of the space station. The module is not necessary, for example, if NASA wants to start building the enormous truss of solar arrays.
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