Russians could ferry crew to space station

A Russian space official today said US manned space flights could be grounded indefinitely following the loss of the shuttle Columbia and suggested that Russian Soyuz rockets should be used to ferry crews back and forth to the International Space Station, a news agency reported.

“It’s absolutely obvious that shuttle flights will be stopped, possibly for some years, until the final determination of the cause of the Columbia accident,” said Sergei Gorbunov, a spokesman for the Russian Space Agency, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

If US shuttles are grounded, only Russian Soyuz rockets would be capable of taking space crews to and from the International Space Station, or ISS, ITAR-Tass quoted Gorbunov as saying.

Increased use of Soyuz rockets would be a potential windfall for the Russian Space Agency, which has seen its budget shrink drastically since the collapse of the Soviet Union and has sought alternative sources of funding.

Soyuz rockets are currently used to send Russian crews to the space station for short visits and are also used for emergency escape capsules on the ISS. US space shuttles have been used to ferry permanent crews back and forth to the station.

After dumping its Mir space station in March 2001, the Russian space programme has concentrated its meagre resources on the 16-nation ISS, a US-led project. Russia has sought to earn money by taking “space tourists” to the ISS, who pay vast sums for a trip into orbit.

The Russian Space Agency said that the Sunday launch of a Progress cargo ship to the International Space Station will go forward as planned, despite the events in the US.

The Progress will be launched from the Russian-operated Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.