Updated: Thu, Feb 27, 2003, 7:52 PM ET (0052 GMT)
Originally Posted: Thu, Feb 27, 2003, 12:57 PM ET (1757 GMT)
NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe told lawmakers Thursday that the partner nations of the International Space Station project have reached an agreement to allow the station to continue operations while the shuttle is grounded. O’Keefe, appearing before members of the House Science Committee for a hearing about NASA’s proposed 2004 budget, said that the ISS partners agreed late Wednesday to use two-person "caretaker" crews to operate the station for the foreseeable future. O'Keefe did not specifically identify those crew members, but Spaceflight Now and MSNBC.com reported later Thursday that the crew would consist of cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and astronaut Ed Lu. Under this plan a two-person crew -- one Russian and one American -- will launch to ISS on a regularly-scheduled Soyuz taxi flight; they will remain on the station as the Expedition Seven crew as the current Expedition Six crew returns on the Soyuz currently docked to the station. Those two-person crews will rotate on a six-month basis on the Soyuz taxi flights until the shuttle returns to flight. O'Keefe said that Russia agreed to increase the number of flights of Progress cargo spacecraft to ISS, saying that two Progress flights, one in 2003 and one in 2004, "will be accelerated" by Rosaviakosmos to support ISS over the next 18 months. O'Keefe said that the station can be safely operated, and some science performed, with only two-person crews, citing studies by Shannon Lucid, the NASA chief scientist and astronaut who spent six months on Mir. Should events require the ISS to be "demanned", O'Keefe said that the station could be safely operated without a crew for up to 6-12 months. That could happen, O'Keefe said, if for some reason the next Progress cargo flight scheduled for June fails.

Related Links:

•  AP article
•   Spaceflight Now article
•  MSNBC article