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Ten more shuttle flights to the space station -- spread over the next two years -- will round out the numbers. NASA hopes to have its share of the orbiting outpost finished in 2010 and its three shuttles retired, so it can focus on human expeditions to the moon. Discovery is scheduled to fly to the space station in late May, carrying up Japan's enormous Kibo lab. The fuel tank for that mission arrived at Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday. Subsequent fuel tanks could get backed up, however, because of all the design changes necessitated by the 2003 Columbia disaster. NASA expects to have a better idea in another month whether it can keep the year's launches on track. Space shuttles are supposed to soar four more times in 2008, which would mean six missions for the year, a flight rate not seen since 2001. Up on the space station, meanwhile, the three occupants are gearing up for next week's arrival of the European Space Agency's supply ship, Jules Verne. The unmanned cargo carrier -- the first of its kind -- rocketed away from French Guiana this month with a load of food, water and clothes. Less than a week after that, on April 8, the Russians will launch a fresh space station crew from Kazakhstan. NASA couldn't be more pleased with this space station traffic jam. Returning aboard Endeavour was French Air Force Gen. Leopold Eyharts, who spent 1 1/2 months aboard the space station, and Japanese astronaut Takao Doi, who accompanied his country's space station contribution to orbit. Raising the Kibo lab's storage compartment from Endeavour's payload bay for attachment to the space station "was a great moment not only for me, but for Japan," Doi said late Tuesday. It was concrete evidence, finally, of the Japanese Space Agency's partnership in the longtime station project. Related Links: |
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