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U.S. Senate Recognized Soyuz as Inviolable
The United States is unable to reject Russia’s Soyuz spaceships for making flights to the International Space Station (ISS). The respective statement was made in the U.S. Senate yesterday and it provided a partial answer to the issue of ending the U.S. space cooperation with Russia advocated by presidential candidate Senator John McCain in the wake of the war for South Ossetia. But the Congress has the last word and it will say it Tuesday.
The U.S. Senate stood for approval of another agreement of NASA and Roskosmos related to the flights of the U.S. astronauts to the ISS as members of Soyuz crew. The contract was threatened by demarche of presidential candidate Senator John McCain and some other republican senators and its reason was the five-day war in the Caucasus.
Washington is predictably interested in proceeding with the space cooperation with Moscow, as its halt will shelve the U.S. program of space research for five or six years. For the United States, extending the operating life of shuttles – Atlantis, Endeavor and Discovery – is the sole alternative, when it comes to abandoning the transport services of Soyuz. On the other hand, the last flights of shuttles have been slated for 2010. Their substitute, Orion, is at the stage of development and will be ready no sooner than in 2015; its testing launch will happen in 2013.
The tricky point is that even the further use of shuttles won’t solve the problem. Soyuz is not only the key transportation vehicle of the program, it is also the rescue spaceship that will save the ISS crew in case of emergency. The shuttles aren’t expected to be used for this purpose.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Sep. 19, 2008
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