NASA plays it cool over leaky spacecraft

 

NASA and Boeing managers have again extended the stay of Starliner at the International Space Station (ISS) this time into July, raising questions among more outspoken commentators as to whether its crew of two Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will need to be offered an alternative means of returning to Earth.

It was revealed in a statement at the weekend that NASA wants more time for analysis to ensure helium leaks and faulty thruster are fully understood before risking the capsule’s first ever return flight with a crew.

The fact that the date has been pushed into July takes it closer to it’s 45-day on orbit limit following lift-off on 5 June. The return flight was originally scheduled for 14 June and then 26 June before the latest decision.

“Mission managers are evaluating future return opportunities which will follow the Space Station’s two planned spacewalks on June 24 and July 2,” said Steve Stich, NASA's commercial crew programme manager. “We are taking our time and following our standard mission management team process.”

The crewed test of the spacecraft, previously test-flown in space twice since 2019 without crew on board, has encountered five failures of its 28 manoeuvring thrusters, five leaks of helium gas meant to pressurize those thrusters, and a slow-moving propellant valve that signalled unfixed past issues.

The issues and the additional tests run by NASA and Boeing call into question when exactly Starliner's crew will be able to make the roughly six-hour return journey home, and in the process add to the programme's broader problems mand delays.

NASA wants Starliner to become a second US spacecraft capable of ferrying astronauts with the ISS and Boeing has already spent $1.5 billion in cost overruns beyond its $4.5-billion development contract.

Already running four years behind schedule, the Starliner crewed launch was a month later than planned due to minor problems with its Atlas 5 rocket, trouble with a countdown computer and because of an initial helium leak in the system used to pressurize the capsule’s thrusters.

NASA and Boeing managers decided the leak was too small to pose a safety threat and Starliner was cleared for launch but once in orbit further helium leaks developed and the Starliner’s flight computer took seven manoeuvring jets off-line when the telemetry did not match pre-launch expectations.

Starliner's undocking from the ISS and return to Earth is one of most complicated phases of its test mission. Most of the craft’s 28 thrusters are backups but at least 12 (six for control and six for backup) are required to meet flight safety rules.

NASA’s weekend update provided no further details but it is clear that managers were unhappy with all contingencies that Wilmore and Williams might encounter during a return flight to Earth, including safely undocking from the Space Station, manoeuvring away, performing a de-orbit burn, separating the crew capsule from the service module, and then flying through the atmosphere before landing under parachutes in a New Mexico desert.

It is not ideal that on such a high profile mission NASA is having to continue delaying the vehicle’s return. Officials have downplayed the overall seriousness of the situation saying Starliner is cleared to come home “in case of an emergency” though have not clarified why they are not ready to release Starliner to fly back to Earth with crew under "normal circumstances".

The situation has promoted many comments and much concern on social media, including some suggesting the Starliner crew is stranded in space. But this is far from true because in the event that NASA decided not to risk a crewed return flight they would have the option of commissioning a dedicated SpaceX Dragon mission to pick them up from the ISS.

Such a move would not look good from a PR perspective for either NASA or Boeing but it would be infinitely preferable to risking the lives of astronauts in a capsule returning to Earth with unresolved or uncertain technical issues. 

#          #

Editor's note: first published by ROOM Space Journal under heading 'NASA postpones Starliner's crew return amid thruster concerns' on Sunday, 23 June 2024.

Space Station ambitions

A PROPOSAL by Asgardia, the space nation, to build and supply a new node module for the International Space Station (ISS) is revealed in an exclusive article in the winter issue of the global space industry publication ROOM Space Journal.

Asgardia - represented by three Austrian-based legal entities, Asgardia Terra Ark (ATA) NGO, Asgardia Financial Ark (AFA) AG and Asgardia Independent Research Centre (AIRC) GmbH - has modelled the node on the proven design of existing European-built modules.

Expanding on the idea in his ROOM article, Dr Igor Ashurbeyli, founder of Asgardia and the general designer of the Asgardia node module and the lead of the project, said the module would help extend the capacity and commercial value of the Space Station.

Asgardia has created a consortium of established industry players, including Nanoracks Europe, Thales Alenia Space (Italy), OHB System (Germany) and QinetiQ (Belgium), to develop, build and deliver the module

As well as supporting commercial development and expanding scientific research opportunities, the state-of-art module would ultimately have the capacity to eventually form the core node of an autonomous space station operated by Asgardia.

In his article, Dr Ashurbeyli notes that the limited number of available docking ports and related infrastructure constitutes a major obstacle to the future expansion of commercial capabilities on the ISS.

“To directly address this, Asgardia has proposed the provision of an Asgardia node module that would be integrated into the European part of the ISS,” he says.

Asgardia’s proposal for a new ISS module was submitted in 2020 in response to a European Space Agency (ESA) Call for Ideas entitled, ‘Space Exploration as a Driver for Growth and Competitiveness: Opportunities for the Private Sector’.

Dr Ashurbeyli describes the project as being “very much in line with the goals of ESA’s space exploration strategy”, adopted in 2014 with the strategic goals of scientific advancement; innovation and economic growth; global cooperation; and inspiration.

“It addresses the current limitations in habitable volume and research capabilities, incorporating the much-needed additional docking ports, which would be made available to both agency and commercial customers.”

He says the project is designed to capture investment from around the world, while providing jobs for European industry and offering a path to take European independence in space to a new level.

Asgardia would own the new infrastructure - comprising a node module based on ISS existing orbital infrastructure developed by the European space industry.

It would commercially fund the project via external investment as part of a public-private partnership (PPP) between commercial organisations and ESA.

An initial technical feasibility study would focus on the insertion of the Asgardia node module between Node 2 starboard and ESA’s Columbus, a configuration that best enables the expansion of docking facilities for third party customers.

Development, manufacturing and deployment is planned to take about five years leading to a possible launch in 2026.

The Asgardia node module would also provide functions for autonomous flight, including rendezvous and docking, a capability crucial for the time when, following the ISS end of life, the Asgardia module could be re-deployed as a core element of Asgardia’s proposed Earth Ark, an autonomous space infrastructure that will enable continuous development and research beyond the operational lifetime of the Space Station.

Despite recognising its “technical validity and potential promise”, ESA has for now declined the consortium’s proposal due to what it described as “political and technological risks”, both of which are refuted by Dr Ashurbeyli in his article.

Addressing the widely noted aspect of Asgardia's positioning as a digital space nation, he writes: “As a digital space nation Asgardia is not yet formally recognised by earthly states and so political risks are zero.”

“Technological risks are also minimal given that the consortium members are space industry world leaders and are committed to the project to design, build and delivery. “Asgardia also remains confident that the financial resources for the project can be found in the marketplace.”

The ambitious proposal was first revealed to space industry leaders by Dr Ashurbeyli during the Asgardia Space Science & Investment Conference (ASIC) in Darmstadt, Germany, in 2019.

Dr Ashurbeyli, a Russian scientist, businessman and philanthropist, is the Founder of Asgardia, which is also currently working to launch the world's first national digital economy.

Asgardia's core technical scientific vision is the birth of the first human child in space - a first   step towards the ultimate survival of the humankind as a species in the universe.

To achieve this Asgardia is examining solutions for protecting people from space radiation, creating artificial gravity for fully-fledged life in space, and is drafting laws to create a fair and equitable society beyond planet Earth.

The full article published in ROOM is available to read by clicking here.

Spy satellite buzzes ISS

AMATEUR satellite observers are keeping a close eye on a US National Reconnaissance Office classified satellite (USA 276) to see whether it returns to the vicinity of the International Space Station (ISS).

After its launch into orbit from Cape Canaveral by SpaceX on 1 May 2017 analysts around the world quickly realised it was doing something more unusual.

Its orbit was similar to that of the Space Station and so could theoretically make close approaches to the orbiting outpost.

Then, just over a month after launch on 3 June, that is exactly what happened. "USA 276 made a close approach and effectively circled the ISS," reported satellite bserver Marco Langbroek of Leiden, The Netherlands. 

Amateur satellite watchers have been tracking USA 276 since late May and their observations have resulted in ever-improving estimates of the satellite's orbit. 

"With the latest data included, we can establish the moment of closest approach as 3 June 2017, 14:01:52 UT. It happened in daylight over the southern Atlantic north of the Falklands, near 43.75 S, 45.45 W, with a miss distance of only 6.4 ± 2 km,” says Langbroek.

In the accompanying chart (prepared by Langbroek) showing the circumstances of the encounter, the brick-coloured box has dimensions of  4 x 4 x 10 km and normally, whenever an object looks like it is going to pass through the box, ISS mission controllers evaluate the possibility of a collision avoidance manoeuvre.

"USA 276 remained just outside the 4 x 4 x 10 km box at closest approach and as a result collision avoidance manoeuvres were not required,” adds Langbroek.

Diagram prepared by Marco Langbroek showing encounter.

The question arises as to why a US spy satellite buzzed the ISS and senior satellite analyst Ted Molczan has published arguments for and against that possibility. "I am inclined to believe that the close conjunctions between USA 276 and the ISS are intentional," he says.

Molczan points out that USA 276 might be visiting the ISS to test Raven - a technology demonstration project on the ISS researchers are using to develop spacecraft autopilot systems.  Raven has visible, infrared and lidar sensors that can track incoming spacecraft, feeding the data to an onboard processor for decision-making about rendezvous and docking.

"I imagine that USA 276 could add to the Raven data set as follows," speculates Molczan. "If it can rendezvous, then it could keep station for long periods, during which it could change its attitude to present the sensors with a variety of views, under a variety of lighting conditions. The total data collected could potentially far exceed that from the other visiting spacecraft."

Another way of looking at the problem, is to ask why, if the ISS is not a target of USA 276, would the highly secretive NRO have permitted a launch so close to its plane, let alone one that yielded such close conjunctions not long after launch, which could only have increased public interest in the mission?

USA 276 looped around the ISS, according to an analysis.

Langbroek says he does not believe for a moment that the NRO was not aware that the launch on 1 May would lead to the ISS close approach a month later. “It would be extremely sloppy of them - from a Space Situational Awareness (SSA) viewpoint - if they were not aware, especially given how close the orbital parameters are to that of the ISS.”

He adds: “This event was sure to attract attention which harms the classified character of the mission. USA 276 is relatively bright and the approach was bound to be noted by independent observers.

“Indeed, some space enthusiasts in Europe unaware of the issue who were out to spot Dragon CRS-11 and Cygnus OA-7 close to the ISS on 4 June, did accidentally see USA 276 passing some three minutes in front of it.

At the time of the launch - and at the request of the NRO -SpaceX cut off launch coverage two minutes and 48 seconds after liftoff, some 30 seconds after the booster’s first-stage separated from the upper-stage. The NRO has declined to provide further details about the satellite or its orbit.

Langbroek also speculates that such a close approach of a high profile object like the ISS is politically risky too.

“As the ISS is an international cooperation which includes two parties (the United States and the Russian Federation) that are currently geopolitically on an uneasy footing, sending your military payload so close to the ISS as one party is eyebrow raising,” he says.

Space Station top ten

The Obama administration has given NASA the go-ahead to operate the International Space Station (ISS) until at least 2024 but many of its scientific achievements to date remain largely unsung to the population at large. 

The US decision means partner agencies, US government establishments and private-sector researchers from around the world can now count on at least another decade of orbital operations.

Bill Gerstenmaier, chief of space operations at NASA Headquarters, said the expanded lifetime will encourage increased commercial use of the lab complex, solidify the commercial launch market and provide critical insights into technology development and human physiology needed for eventual flights to deep space targets like Mars.

But what of the scientific value of such a challenging, and ultimately costly, enterprise like the International Space Station?

In September at the 64th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Beijing, China, delegates were treated to an inspiring presentation by NASA’s Dr Julie Robinson, International Space Station Program Scientist at the Johnson Space Center (JSC).

Dr Robinson, who coordinates the International Space Station (ISS) science programme and is author of ‘ISS Benefits for Humanity’ (published by NASA in 2012) spoke on the ‘Top 10 Research Results from Space Station’.

She provided historical context to her personal choice by stating the fundamental reason humans explore is not being motivated  by the advancement of science.

“Early explorers travelled the world to exploit economic opportunities not to inspire their children about it,” she said. “Explorers are responsible for pushing the boundaries and the scientists follow behind.”

Dr Robinson described the ISS as “the most complex machine ever built by humans” and told delegates that it was easy to be “uniformed” about some of the great results coming from the Space Station.

“The Space Station is unique in that it supports almost every scientific discipline in some way,” she explained.

“Ultimately it will be judged on its engineering achievements, international achievements and science achievements. We are now in the research stage and this is very important to our stakeholders - 69 countries have participated in ISS utilisation so far.” 

In selecting a personal ‘top 10',  Dr Robinson took into account a variety of criteria - scientific journal quality, comments and reviews by other scientists, cases where novel information was presented, and benefits to humankind - all of which she described as important considerations in terms of research legacy.

Number 10 - preventing loss of bone mass in space through diet and exercise; if astronauts do the right set of exercises, have the correct amount of vitamin D and calories in their diet then they come home okay. Resistive exercise now helps treat osteoporosis cases on Earth.

Number 9 - understanding the mechanism of osteoporosis and developing new drugs to treat it. The first new drugs for treating muscle waste are now on the market as a result of research in microgravity.

Number 8 - Hyper-spectral imaging for water quality in coastal bays. A ‘gold standard’, according to Dr Robinson, which also allows scientists to distinguish between sediment pollution on satellite imagery.

Number 7 - Colloid self-assembly using electron fields for nano particles, a process which is impacting manufacturing processes on Earth.

Number 6 - New process of cool flame combustion - an unexpected and novel result. In microgravity, flames burn differently forming flaming spheres that turn out to be mini-labs for combustion research. Unlike flames on Earth, which expand greedily when they need more fuel, flame balls let the oxygen come to them.

Number 5 - A pathway for bacterial pathogens to become virulent; bacteria can become more virulent in space. Studying this helps develop new treatments and is an example of where biological science can make a significant advance by going into a different environment.

Number 4 - educational outreach, with 43 million students from all over the globe.

Number 3 - Dark matter is still out there according to the first data gathered from the ISS Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) the most sophisticated detector of gamma cosmic rays that has ever been built.

Number 2 - Robotic assistance for brain surgery - the technology that went into developing neuroArm, the world’s first robot capable of performing surgery inside magnetic resonance machines, was born of the Canadarm.

Number 1 - A new targeted method of chemotherapy drug delivery with medical trials now underway as a result of ISS medical developments. It involves a single step process forming tiny liquid-filled, biodegradable micro-balloons containing various drug solutions (a process called microgravity micro-encapsulation) that can provide better drug delivery for tumours.

Dr Robinson concluded: “The benefits I have selected serve as examples of the Space Station’s potential as a ground-breaking scientific research facility. 

“The ISS advances the state of scientific knowledge of our planet, looking after our health, and providing a space platform that inspires and educates the science and technology leaders of tomorrow.

“These benefits will drive the legacy of the ISS as its research strengthens economies and enhances the quality of life here on Earth for all people.”

The above article is based on one of a series of daily reports from the International Astronautical Congress 2013 held in Beijing, China, written by Clive Simpson for the Paris-based International Astronautical Association (IAF) and first appearing on the IAF website

British astronaut flight

"This is Ground Control to Major Tim - congratulations on your selection as ESA’s first British astronaut to undertake a mission to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2015; you are cleared for takeoff!"

At a press conference in London this morning (Monday, 20 May) ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain will officially name the first official British astronaut to undertake a space mission for 20 years.

Major Tim Peake, Britain's first ESA astronaut, became eligible for space missions in 2010 after completing more than a year of intensive training with the European Space Agency (ESA).

Peake, a former army helicopter test pilot from Chichester, England, was one of six other astronauts selected from across Europe in 2009.

The first place aboard a Russian Soyuz for launch this spring went to an Italian astronaut and it was widely expected that Britain’s astronaut would have to wait until 2017 for a ride into space.

Emergency spacewalk

Two astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) embark on an emergency spacewalk today to try to fix an ammonia leak in a cooling system on one of the Station's solar arrays.

The crew spotted a steady stream of small, white frozen ammonia flakes floating away from a coolant line outside the orbital outpost on Thursday.

Mission managers reviewed images and data gathered overnight and said yesterday that they planned to send American astronauts Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn out to try to seal the leak by replacing a pump on the cooling system.

"The crew is not in danger, and the Station continues to operate normally otherwise," a NASA spokesman said.

Ammonia is used to cool the power systems that operate the solar arrays, which provide electricity to the Space Station. Each of the eight solar arrays has its own independent cooling system.

The leak is on the far left side of the Station's truss structure, in an ammonia loop that astronauts previously tried to troubleshoot during a spacewalk last November.

While Cassidy and Marshburn are working outside the ISS, crew commander Chris Hadfield, a Canadian astronaut, will choreograph their movements from inside. Russian cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov, Alexander Misurkin and Roman Romanenko make up the rest of the crew.

Work was undertaken to re-route the remaining power channels to maintain full operation of the systems normally controlled by the solar array that is cooled by the leaking loop.

After making their way 150 feet or so from the airlock to the far end of the P6 truss, Marshburn and Cassidy will visually inspect the area around the pump module to see if there are any obvious signs of micrometeoroid damage or any other problems.

On the assumption the leak is located is the 250-pound PFCS (Pump Flow Control Subassembly) box, Marshburn and Cassidy will install a replacement from one of three onboard spares. They also will carry out a detailed inspection of the bay where the pump is housed.

If the leak is still present after the pump module is replaced, engineers will have to go back to the drawing board to come up with a different solution.

Whatever the outcome, three of the station's six-man crew - Marshburn, Hadfield and cosmonaut Roman Romanenko - will undock as planned on Monday and return to Earth aboard a Russian Soyuz ferry craft to end their 146-day stay in space.

Three fresh crew members - NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg, ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano and cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin - are scheduled for launch to the ISS later this month, boosting the crew back to six.

If an additional near-term spacewalk is needed to resolve the coolant leak, it would fall to Cassidy and Parmitano, who already are scheduled for previously-planned spacewalks on July 9 and 16.

The ISS is a £65 billion research laboratory that orbits 250 miles above Earth, and is jointly owned by the United States and Russia in partnership with Europe, Japan and Canada.

SpaceX on target

Delegates at the 63rd International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Naples, Italy, were treated to a first-hand update on the latest news from commercial space company SpaceX on Friday, 5 October - just two days before the planned launch of its latest mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

Introducing the third ‘breaking news' session of the week Barry Matsumori, Senior Vice-President of Commercial Sales and Business Development at SpaceX, quipped that he and his colleague Robert Feierbach, Vice-President of Business Development, were the only two employees not working on Sunday's launch.

On the heels of a successful debut flight to the Space Station in May of this year, SpaceX launches its first commercial Dragon resupply mission to the Space Station under a contract that will see 12 such missions.

Launch of the SpaceX CRS-1 flight was set for 20:35 EDT on 7 October from Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.

After arrival at the ISS on 10 October, Dragon, grappled and berthed to the complex for an expected two-week visit, is scheduled to return to Earth on October 28 for a parachute-assisted splashdown off the coast of southern California.

Dragon is currently the only Space Station cargo craft capable of returning a significant amount of supplies back to Earth, including experiments.

For this mission, it is filled with about 1,000 pounds of supplies, including critical materials to support the 166 investigations planned for the Station's Expedition 33 crew.

Dragon will return with about 734 pounds of scientific materials, including results from human research, biotechnology, materials and education experiments, as well as about 504 pounds of Space Station hardware.

Matsumori explained that SpaceX had been in existence for just a decade, making it a young company in aerospace terms. "We have come a long way in that time and now have 1800 employees which are growing at around 200 per year," he said.

SpaceX currently launches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California but Matsumori said the company is looking at the possibility of an additional commercial launch site.

"We want to ensure we have plenty of capacity and a new launch site would be used particularly for sending payloads into geostationary orbits," he said.

Potential sites under evaluation are in South Texas, where the company also has an engine test range, Florida, and "other locations" on mainland USA.

Matsumori wasn't able to provide further details but said that the timing of any new site coming on stream would be largely dependent on the length of time required for environmental approvals.

He described SpaceX as an ‘internet' company and said that it had a reputation in the industry for being very competitive, and was driven by the goals of achieving high reliability and lost cost production.

The company's current product line comprises the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule, the Falcon 9 with a 5.2 metre fairing, and the upcoming Falcon Heavy - essentially made from three Falcon 9's strapped together - which is under development.

"The Falcon 9 - so-called because it has nine engines and after the Millennium Falcon spacecraft of Star War's fame - is a two-stage vehicle for reliability and simplicity," he explained.

During the session, Matsumori also gave a technical overview of the summer's COTS 2 (Commercial Orbital Transportation Service) mission carrying cargo to the ISS for the first time and showed a short film of mission footage.

Afterwards, he said the simplicity of the film wasn't able to convey the true complexity of the flight in all its detail. "It was our first mission to the ISS and we didn't want to make any mistakes," he told delegates.


The above is one of a series of daily reports from the International Astronautical Congress 2012 held in Naples, Italy, written by Clive Simpson for the Paris-based International Astronautical Association (IAF) and first appearing on the IAF website

Pictures from above

As a keen photographer the Lighthouse Keeper is always looking for a new angle or perspective on a familiar subject - but from an earthly vantage point even perched atop of a high crane is no match for the kind of views astronauts have from the orbiting International Space Station.

This night time view of India-Pakistan borderlands was one of a series of night-time shots captured recently by one of the six crew members, who often say that one of their favourite off-duty pastimes is gazing back at Earth as there is "always something spectacular to see".

Clusters of yellow lights on the Indo-Gangetic Plain of northern India and northern Pakistan reveal numerous cities both large and small.

Of the hundreds of clusters, the largest are the metropolitan areas associated with the capital cities of Islamabad, Pakistan, in the foreground and New Delhi, India, at the top. For scale these metropolitan areas are approximately 700 km apart.

The lines of major highways connecting the larger cities also stand out. More subtle but still visible at night are the general outlines of the towering and partly cloud-covered Himalayan ranges immediately to the north (left).

A striking feature of this photograph is the line of lights, with a distinctly more orange hue, snaking across the central part of the image.

It appears to be more continuous and brighter than most highways in the view and is actually the fenced and floodlit border zone between the countries of India and Pakistan. The fence is designed to discourage smuggling and arms trafficking between the two countries.

This image was taken on a digital SLR camera with a 16 mm lens to provide a wide field of view, as the Space Station was tracking towards the southeast across the subcontinent of India.

The distinct, bright zone above the horizon (visible at top) is produced by airglow, a phenomena caused by excitation of atoms and molecules high in the atmosphere (above 80 km altitude) by ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. Part of the ISS and a solar panel array are visible at right.

This photograph below, taken from the Space Station at the end of July 2011, shows the Moon with the limb of Earth near the bottom, transitioning into the orange-coloured troposphere, the lowest and most dense portion of Earth's atmosphere.

The troposphere ends abruptly at the tropopause, which appears in the image as the sharp boundary between the orange and blue-coloured atmosphere. The silvery-blue noctilucent clouds extend far above the Earth's troposphere.

A twist of fate

No one would have dared predict that the first Russian rocket to be launched to the International Space Station (ISS) following the retirement of the US Space Shuttle this summer would be doomed to failure.

It is an ironic turn of events that means for the time being the ISS is currently flying with no means of replacing the astronauts and cosmonauts working on the recently completed orbiting outpost.

At the very least last week’s Russian rocket failure will likely delay the first post-Shuttle era launch of new crew members to the Station. And at worst it could mean a complete withdrawal of all crew before the year’s end if Russia is unable to resume manned flights of its Soyuz rocket.

Despite the delivery of important logistics by the final Space Shuttle mission in July, safety concerns with landing Soyuz capsules in the middle of winter could force the Space Station to fly unmanned beginning in November, according to Michael Suffredini, NASA's ISS programme manager.

Investigations started immediately into why the upper stage of a Soyuz-U booster carrying an unmanned Russian Progress supply ship malfunctioned and shut down five minutes and 20 seconds after launch from Baikonur in Kazakhstan.

Some 2.9 tons of supplies and equipment for the Space Station were lost as the Progress M-12M/44P spacecraft crashed back to Earth during what was ironically the first launch to the orbiting complex since the Space Shuttle was retired in July.

The supply train to the ISS is critical for supporting a full-time crew of six but for now the Station remains in good shape thanks to the deliveries by Atlantis in July.

The Soyuz-U upper stage is virtually identical to the third stage used by Russia’s manned Soyuz spacecraft, which was targeted to launch again on 22 September.

With two Soyuz crew launches and two Progress deliveries scheduled before the end of 2011, the failure is certain to disrupt plans to ferry new crews and cargo shipments to the ISS.

Three current crew members — Expedition 28 commander Andrey Borisenko, Alexander Samokutyaev and Ronald Garan — will have their return to Earth, which was scheduled for 8 September, postponed for several weeks to keep six people at the ISS for as long as possible.

But Garan and his two cosmonaut colleagues could only extend their stay until late October when they would have to return to Earth. The Soyuz spacecraft they will fly home in has an orbital life due to ‘expire’ around 22 October - which means the ship is certified by engineering teams as safe for the return flight to Earth until that date.

A departure at that point would leave just three people on the ISS until Soyuz launches can resume. A crew of three can maintain the outpost but science and research work would suffer.

The other half of the Station's six-person crew — NASA flight engineer Michael Fossum, Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov and Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa — are supposed to return home on 16 November.

"The November crew has a little different issue," Suffredini said this week. "If we're not launching by then and we have to de-man the Space Station, we pretty much have to do that probably by about the middle of November."

That crew's Soyuz capsule, named Soyuz TMA-02M, blasted off June 7 and would need to land in late December or early January.

"One of our requirements is to land in daylight, and it has to be an hour from sunset or sunrise," Suffredini said. "On 19 November we reach that cutoff and we go dark."

The next daylight landing window opens in late December, but NASA and Russian officials will then be concerned about extreme winter weather conditions in the Soyuz landing zone on the steppes of Kazakhstan.

"The weather is severe out there in the winter time," Suffredini said. "So from a search and rescue standpoint, that's probably something we don't want to do. Even if it's within our requirements, we probably don't want to be landing two hours before sunset. If we had any problem at all, we would be searching for the crew in a blowing snow storm in the middle of night."

The Soyuz-U rocket has a good safety record over the past four decades of operations — 745 successful launches and 21 failures — and this is the first time there has been such a failure since construction of the Space Station started a decade ago.

With the United States' Shuttle fleet retirement last month, Russian Soyuz spacecraft are currently the only vehicles capable of flying astronauts to and from the Space Station. NASA is investing in the development of commercial ‘private’ space taxis, but those craft remain in development stage and are not estimated to be ready before 2015 or 2016.

Ken Kremer, who has reported on all of the last Space Shuttle flights to the ISS in recent years for Spaceflight magazine, said the loss of the Russian Progress highlighted the "utter folly" of the Shuttle programme shutdown.