Snags Put Crew of Space Station Behind Schedule

The first occupants of the future international space station will arrive months later than planned because of the anticipated delay in launching a critical Russian part, a top NASA official said Thursday.

NASA astronaut William Shepherd and two Russian cosmonauts were supposed to fly to the space station in May 1998, six months after the launch of the first station component.

But now they won’t get there until October 1998 at the earliest because of the Russians’ inability to launch a service module on time, said space station program manager Randy Brinkley. The module, a live-in cylinder about 40 feet long with life-support equipment and fuel storage, is needed before anyone can live permanently on the station.

Brinkley said the Russian Space Agency has told him that a lack of money has left it as much as eight months behind on the module. It was supposed to be launched in April 1998, with Shepherd and his crew following on a Russian Soyuz rocket a month later.

Russian space officials acknowledged the delay during an unusually candid meeting in Moscow late last month, Brinkley said.

If the Russian Space Agency receives full funding from its government by the end of January, the component could be completed and launched by December 1998, Brinkley said. It’s even possible that launch date could be pushed up to September 1998. But to try to rush and get the module up any sooner would compress testing too much and “it’s not something you would want to do,” he said.