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INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION DEVELOPMENTS
Russian Funding Crisis Delays Station
The International Space Station project faces serious problems in 1997. The Russian Service Module which will house the first crew and provide critical propulsion and control of the ISS, has fallen far behind schedule due to lack of Russian funding for the project. Mechanical assembly was scheduled to be complete in Nov. 1997 and shipment to Baykonur in December 1997 only if 2-3 shifts a day and full funding was found immediately.
In September, design review meetings in Houston reviewed ISS project progress. Chief among concerns was the schedule of the Service Module. Although the Russian's promised loans to help production, little progress actually has been made since suppliers to RKK Energia are demanding payment of old debts before doing new work. As a result development of the Service Module is several months late at a minimum meaning a equal delay in launch of the first permanent crew of the ISS.
During the summer, a time saving plan had been developed to launch a bare bones Service Module which would be equipped with some systems in orbit by Progress. At the least the avionics suite was expected to be finished late and installed after launch. Also thrown out for the first launch were the life support systems, crew accommodations, all but systems that would allow it to fly. This would delay the first permanent crew by many months past 1998, possibly prohibiting permanent Russian crews for the indefinite future since the Service Module is not designed to be outfitted in orbit.
The best that NASA could boast at the end of the summer was that the Russians had finished contracting with all subcontractors for the Service Module. That's a long way from meaning there was money to back up those contracts, but Prime Minister Chernomyrdin has committed to the success of the project. It should be noted that Chernomyrdin's boss, President Yeltsin also made many commitments to pay debts during his election campaign but after election quickly retreated from his promises.
Since there is no hope of realistic funding anytime next year, the prospects for a default on the Russian side is unquestionable. It does not help that NASA has already been talking about a contingency plan of buying the Service Module and having it completed like the highly successful NASA funded FGB module. The cash strapped Russians will jump at the chance to sell the Service Module, but the complications of command and ownership of any of the station will be hard for the Russians to overcome. Without contributing their own hardware or logistics they will not be entitled to fly crew on the station. It is possible that the Russians can still contribute other modules to the station like the Science Power Platform modules scheduled for NASA launch in late 1999 or 2000.
Russian and NASA meetings continued for the rest of the year trying to better define the situation and explore alternatives for the Service module development, but no progress was expected until the Gore-Chernomyrdin meeting in January 1997. Since the goal of cooperating with the Russians in the ISS project is to keep their aerospace industry from disintegrating and spreading its knowledge to other countries weapons development programs. If the project is to keep anything like the original schedule, the US has left itself with no option but to finance the Russian ISS development programs and future logistics flights to the station while continuing to fly Russian crew members for their expertise in operation of the modules.
To counter overwhelming Russian problems, the RSA decided to put some pressure on NASA by announcing that it is now relying on shuttle resupply flights to Mir and if their schedule is delayed by as much as a month there is no guarantee the station will continue to be manned. Each Shuttle-Mir docking mission is roughly equal to a Progress resupply flight and carries critical water, air, and food supplies.
FGB on Schedule but Anticipating Delay
On the bright side, the NASA representative in Moscow said there has been some additional activity at Khrunichev on the ISS since the elections. Work on the first LTV (formerly the backup FGB) has begun and it was being modified to match planned docking loads of the originally planned Progress-X which it replaces. It remains unclear if the LTV work will run into the same funding problems as the Service Module, or if Khrunichev will be more successful than Energia in running the project to build a resupply ship for the ISS.
The crew of the first US Space Station assembly mission was officially announced in August. The flight includes a rendezvous with the Russian launched FGB module, docking the Node-1 to the FGB and an EVA to make data and power cable connections between the modules. Crew training is underway for the Node-1 launch, docking and EVA's to connect the two modules. The shuttle crew will also be the first to enter the NASA owned-Russian built FGB in flight. The FGB itself completed major mechanical assembly in December at Khrunichev, an event which was much heralded and publicized by Boeing and NASA, but the module still is lacking many subsystems including docking and life support systems.
The FGB continues on schedule with minor changes being made for docking lights, EVA equipment, meteoroid shielding at additional cost to NASA.. Node-1 passed pressure tests in the summer but double shifts have to be run to meet the launch date. Costs have risen by $122 Million ($40 Million for Node structural fixes related to pressure test problems, $40 Million for similar Lab module fixes, $42 Million for assorted cost overruns for gyroscopes, multiplexer/demultiplexer's, various electronics, and battery chargers). Total estimated cost overrun at project completion will now be $180 Million. $2.1 Billion in reserves are still in place to cover these costs.
The FGB can be launched on time, but can only fly with Node-1 for 400 days before docking with the Service Module and refuelling by Progress. Rumors at the end of 1996 put the Service Module launch in December 1998 at the earliest, leaving about 20-50 days lee-way in the FGB's 400 days, so delay of the FGB is likely.
ISS Crew Confusion
In the fall, a verbal agreement was reached with the Russians about the ISS crew command. After some independent help from ASTP veteran Thomas Stafford, it was verbally agreed that Shepherd would command the crew onboard the station and Solovyov would command the crew while in transport to and from the station, their titles would be "expedition commander" and "technical manager of the Russian segment" respectively. This agreement partially appeased Russian law created in 1993 which requires all commanders of Russian space missions must be Russian's.
In November, Solovyov asked to be transferred from the first ISS crew to the Mir-24 crew, trading places with Gidzinko who was training for the Mir mission. There are two suspicions for this change, although Solovyov has not made his reason public. One is that the ISS crew command was very recently finalized in favor of Shepherd. The other reason may simply be the unavoidable delays in the ISS schedule which simply mean Solovyov will not have the chance to fly as often as he may wish in the future.
Another advancement made in September was the kickoff of ISS crew training planning with training of the first crew was to beginning in October. William Shepherd arrived in Zvezdny Gorodok for training in October and by November was training on Soyuz systems for the first ISS mission. In November, the STS-88 crew visited Khrunichev to inspect the FGB module and observe some of its systems testing.
SHUTTLE-MIR
Mir Operations
In September, Itar-TASS reported that the RSA had discontinued all plans to use the Soyuz-U2 booster in the future and use by the military or the French Starsem joint venture in the future is not likely. Military Space Forces commander Vladimir Ivanov as chairman of the commission for manned spaceflight approved the decision. The Soyuz-U2 had been used since 1982 and by the manned space program since the early 1990's, its last flight was on Sept. 3, 1995. The reason for the cancellation officially is the lack of production of the special kerosene propellant, Synthin, and its high cost. In order to recover some of the lost payload capability, the Soyuz-U will be modified to lighten it including eliminating some backup systems. This is hopefully temporary since the Soyuz-2 with even greater capabilities is scheduled to begin testing in the next year or two. Later it became clear that not only backup systems, but formerly primary systems including the Kurs docking system was slated for abandonment, although on the pretence quality of deliveries from the supplier (Keiv's Radiopribor association) had fallen. In reality there are just no funds to buy the systems anymore and this resulted in deliveries of incomplete systems. It was announced that no more launches would be Kurs (automated docking system) equipped from 1997 onward, but a December 1996 EVA of the Mir-22 crew moved a Kurs antenna to a better position on the Mir transfer compartment, implying a Kurs may still be in the pipeline for a launch in 1997.
Kurs was also to be removed from Progress making the manual remote control docking system the only method of docking the Progress. Gone are the days when transports could be flown unmanned to station without a crew for testing or convenience. Its mostly a moot point anyway since Mir can not be left unmanned for even short periods due to aging equipment which fails frequently. Energia Deputy Director Valeri Ryumin said that Mir currently requires 15-20% of crew time for maintenance, but at times is higher as problems develope. He also confirmed that if Mir were unmanned it would probably go silent like Salyut 7 did in 1985.
On October 15, Progress M-33 was delayed to early November due to funding problems, in fact the military which had come to the RSA's aid over the last 2 years when its own boosters were held up for various reasons, finally refused to loan a military booster for the mission. At the same time it was announced the joint NASA Bion mission was to be postponed for the same reason. One of the more critical requirements for the Progress was to launch replacement waste tanks for Mir's toilet so the old tanks can be removed for destruction. Normally, the liquid recycling system can utilize liquid waste but a pump in the system was leaking fluid into the stations cooling system and the crew couldn't find a replacement pump to repair it. A new pump to repair the system was to be launched on the Progress and until then the crew must use backup procedures to deal with their bodily waste storing it in tanks which were nearly full.
Also in October, the Russians announced a new truss would be built on Kvant module which will be used to support a new attitude control module to be installed in 1997. The current module will run out of propellant and can't easily be refuelled. The modules are launched on specially modified Progress.
On November 7, the crew was informed of another delay, this time the Soyuz TM-25 carrying the Mir-23 Russian-German crew would officially be delayed from December to February. Progress M-34 was also delayed into 1997. Both delay had been expected for at least a month due to the Progress M-33 delay. Also in early November, the Progress M-32 experienced a failure of an attitude control thruster which forced the station into free drift mode for a few hours as the system was reconfigured. During this time some power conservation was practiced on Mir due to a loss in optimum pointing of the solar arrays.
Progress M-33 was finally launched by Soyuz-U on Nov. 19, carrying fuel, food, Oxygen, replacement pump and tanks for the waste regeneration system, Christmas and New Year's presents, totaling 2,200 kg.. An automatic docking was successful, a few hours after the crew awoke on Nov. 20.
NASA Operations
In the summer of 1996, Elena Kondakova was assigned as a mission specialist on STS-84 due for launch in May 1997. Even she couldn't publicly explain why she was chosen to make the flight. In an interview while training at JSC, she said the objective of her flight was not defined other than it is related to continued tests of the ESA's GPS based rendezvous and docking system (tested on STS-80). It is typical in Russia for personal connections to aid in being selected for flight and Kondakova's husband is RKK Energia Deputy Director Valeri Ryumin.
In November, it was announced that Vladimir Titov was also added to the crew of STS-86, again for undefined reasons, although it was rumored to be related to ISS negotiations as favors to powerful Russian participants. STS-86 was planned to include a joint US-Russian EVA. The joint EVA became a US only EVA in December as the Russian EVA was cancelled. The Ukranian astronaut for STS-87 has not been selected yet, but in November there were five candidates under evaluation. Apparently, Ukraine is paying $85,000 to the US in relation to the flight.
In November, John Blaha on Mir completed the first Bioreactor experiment run producing a three dimensional cartilage and began the final harvest of wheat from the greenhouse experiment in Kristal. Blaha said that over the weeks he had come to agree with many cosmonauts who say the one can become much more efficient at working in space after a few weeks in weightlessness. By late November, the Mir crew had turned off the water to the greenhouse to speed up the wheat maturation to speed the harvest, and the crew started unloading the new Progress. For the American Thanksgiving holiday, the Mir crew had a traditional turkey dinner, and Blaha spoke with the STS-80 crew while they were in orbit. Linenger also underwent his final medical review before his flight to Mir on STS-81.
The STS-84 crew arrived in Zvezdny Gorodok on Nov. 1 for a tour and for rendezvous and docking simulations with Vassily Tsiblev and Alexander Lazutkin. Linenger and Foale have been training in Russia for EVA's they will make from Mir. Linenger will make a 6 hour EVA in March 1997 using the Russian Orlan space suit along with Tsiblev to install a frame about a meter square for long term exposure to space as part of the Optical Properties Monitor experiment. they will also retrieve other materials which has been exposed for several months. Linenger said that EVA training in Russia was more focused on general skills working outside the station rather than NASA's focus on specific tasks for a single EVA.
In early December a new crop was planted in the Kristal greenhouse using a new air control system allowing measurement of air quality in the greenhouse. An EVA by Mir-23 Russian crew members in December finalized the installation of the MCSA by installing additional power cables from the array to the Mir. They also moved two Kurs antennas and temporarily fixed the Mir HAM radio antenna used by thousands of people around the world. The second Bioreactor experiment run in December developed unexpected problems as a large percentage of volume was taken up by air bubbles. This necessitated manual operation of the system and daily tending of the replacement of new media used in forming cartilage.
Future Mir Operations
STS-81 proceeded smoothly to launch scheduled for January 1997 despite no resolution to the unusual SRB nozzel erosion on STS-79 and STS-80. STS-81 will be nearly a duplicate of STS-79, with the Spacehab carrying:
Continuation of previous ISS Risk Mitigation Experiments include:
|
STS-81 Cargo to/from Mir |
||
| Items | Weight Up | Weight Down |
| Water | 636 kg. | N/A |
| US Science | 517 kg. | 571 kg. |
| Russian Logistics | 1002 kg. | 382 kg. |
| CNES Science | N/A | ? kg. |
| Miscellaneous | 112 kg. | 1051 kg. |
The Spacehab on STS-81 carries Russian logistics as 43% of its cargo, NASA logistics including science hardware amounted to 15%, and ISS mitigation experiments took up 23% of its cargo. Spacehab will also be used to return a French payload from the Cassiopeia mission. RKK Energia provided a mounting frame which will be mounted on the floor of the Spacehab and the French experiment will be mounted to the frame. Shuttle-Mir flights launch an equivalent amount of dry (non-propellant) cargo as a Progress resupply flight greatly reducing the cost of Mir operations for the Russians.
The Russians always provide a list of items (like station storage batteries) they would like to launch as contingency items and the list was to be reviewed at the STS-81 flight readiness review in early January. One locker on the Spacehab can be loaded as late as a few weeks before launch. Miscellaneous items carried for the Mir crew include a birthday cake to celebrate Linenger's birthday in orbit with the Mir crew, can openers, flash lights, shuttle crew shirts, and commemorative stained glass replicas of Mir and the Shuttle for both cosmonauts.
As on previous flights water generated on orbit by the orbiter fuel cells will be transferred to Mir. Dust collectors placed outside Mir have been retrieved by the Mir-22 cosmonauts will also be returned by STS-81. STS-81's flight plan and maneuvers are all very similar to STS-79. The last cargo transfer simulation with Russia was staged on Dec. 19. Mir was scheduled to make orbital adjustments to circularize its orbit to aid rendezvous with the shuttle, on Dec. 26 and Jan. 8 using Progress M-33 were planned.
International Mir Missions
After a series of short missions, the French space agency now is preparing for International Space Station missions with longer Mir flights. French missions to Mir continue in the summer of 1997 when Leopold Eyharts flys to Mir for a 21 day mission in exchange for 85 Million Francs. On Nov. 26, France and Russia signed economic agreements including an agreement on continued cooperation in space exploration. When NASA missions are complete in 1999 a 120 day French mission will take place. This also likely prohibit an extension to the Phase 1 NASA program to the start of ISS missions if it is delayed past July 1999.
On April 26, China and Russia signed agreements on economic and technology cooperation designed to boost mutual trade from about $5 Billion to $20 Billion annually. Included were a nuclear power plant being built in northern China, sale of a spacecraft life support system and cosmonaut training for two chinese. The Chinese cosmonaut trainees arrived at Star City for unspecified training in October. RKK Energia supplied the life support system equipment to China. Statements made at the IAF conference in China made clear that this cooperation was only in the beginning phase and would increase in the future. China intends to build a manned spacecraft in the future, perhaps to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the revolution, but China has had the same thoughts since the 1970's and 80's and they never came to fruition.
Mars-96
Early on Nov. 18, Mars-96 was launched from Baykonur and within a few hours was a total failure. The probe was believed to have reentering over the Pacific followed by the booster stage a day later. The failure prompted a White House press release putting Australia which was in the orbital path on alert, but this proved to be too late because the probe had already fallen and NORAD was really tracking he booster. The Mars-96 landers and penetrators all could survive reentry and carried small nuclear power sources design to survive any conceivable accident. The Block-D2 was reported to have reentered at 50.9° South and 168.1° West at 1:13 UTC Nov. 18. but this was not true. Mars-96 itself reentered at that time further along the ground track over northern Chile and Bolivia. On Nov. 19 the Block-D2 reentered over the South Pacific.
Chilean officials were furious with the Russians failure to inform them of the true crash area. Independent US analyst James Oberg criticized US officials for their failure to warn all countries along the ground path. US tracking sites in the South pacific were not readied to track the objects and Russia had sold its tracking ships used for previous launches. Chile was not warned for days of the actual crash area putting people at risk of exposure to nuclear power sources on the landers and penetrators. More than once in the past, lost nuclear materials have been collected by unsuspecting people for their unique properties like heat or luminescence.
Chile's defense minister complained to the press about Russia's slow communication of the accident which could have put small quantities of Plutonium on the country. He said, "The Russian authorities have an information policy that we, at least, don't completely understand,...We were informed ... with some delay by the authorities, and that needs to be clarified.". This is just another manifestation of the financial crisis the project was developed in, there simply was no contingency for timely communications of a failure or potential emergency to foreign countries. It must be remembered that the Russian Space Agency has no provision to provide the public with any information in the way NASA's charter requires. If fact the fastest ways to follow the flight was through personal connections or the internet FPSPACE listserv which deals with Russian space topics. After more analysis of the accident it became clear that Chile's initial search for radiation was in the wrong spot, where the Block-D2 landed instead of Mars-96's landing site hundreds of miles away.
Russian constructors of the mission at Babakin and Lavochkin were left demoralized by the public failure, but must be somewhat relieved to have the mission over after a torturous 10 year history. In fact, some parts of the spacecraft were launched untested including camera pointing system. Post launch reports also said that an accident connecting the solar panels days before the launch had potentially destroyed some components.There was simply no time or money to fix any failures and it was hoped any problems could be worked out in flight. Another major delay until next years launch window was just not possible due to the great expense in staffing the project and purchasing new equipment to replace that which had a short shelf life. Additional reports after launch stated that the power to the Proton facilities were repeatedly cut by Kazak energy suppliers, a report attributed to Roald Sagdeev said that work had to proceed with kerosene lanterns. Commercial launches of the Proton are provided with independent power supplies, but they were obviously not available for the cash poor science program.
The fact is the project was run into the ground by inadequate funding and poor high level management. Nobody wanted it to continue any longer and launching it was the only way to save face and avoid the pain of another insurmountable delay, for now ending a long history of many successful planetary science missions. The RSA plans to continue work on three science missions in the future but none as complex as Mars-96. Implications for ILS and future commercial Proton launches are yet to be determined. A complete accident report will likely be done by the end of 1996 or early 1997.
On Oct. 2, Russian Space Forces chief Vladimir Ivanov was among the casualties of military reorganization and downsizing. His dismissal was announced on the eve of the annual Military Space Forces day. The cause goes back to President Yeltisin's appointment of the popular former General Alexander Leded as Russia's national security chief in part to aid Yeltsin's election chances. Lebed dismissed Russia's Defence Minister Pavel Grachev due to past friction between the two, and his replacement, Igor Rodionov slowly began formulating a plan to restore strength to the Russian military through downsizing to maintainable levels. The plan for the next 10 years calls for increased funding for research and development, and less for maintaining current production facilities. Final government approval was needed before the plan can be enacted, but the consolidation of military units and replacement of their commanders began in October on Rodionov's orders signed by President Yeltsin.
In Ivanov's case, the rumor is that Strategic Missile Forces commander Igor Sergeyev wanted to merge the space forces back into the missile forces he commands to restore the organization that existed several years ago, and this agreed with Rodionov's plan to reduce the size of the military. It may also be related to a struggle for control of Baykonur and Plesetsk which had been to some degree managed jointly by both forces in past years. In an interview just before his removal, Ivanov said only 8% of R&D funding, 20% of hardware procurement and 6% of construction budgets had been received by the space forces in 1996.
By the end of 1996, stories of the militaries downfall got more extreme. Rodionov himself confirmed reports that solders at a post in the far east had died of starvation, and some had resorted to selling blood to make money to get by. Some portion of wage payments for 1996 will be made to units by the end of the year, but complete payment is out of the question for most. In October the CIA reported that control of nuclear weapons in Russia was weakening due to these extreme social pressures which the system was never designed to cope with.
Sources: FBIS, Novosti Kosmonavtiki, BBC Monitoring, wire services, Press Releases, OMRI Daily Digest, NASA TV, personal correspondance. An expanded and referenced version of Cosmonautics news including space center news, space industry, military space forces and related news is available from the Russian Aerospace Guide. For samples and back issues visit the Russian Aerospace Guide web site at http://home.attbi.com/~rusaerog/
Cosmonautics News is reprinted here with permission from CSPACE PRESS INC., P.O. Box 9331, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 49509-0331
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