NASA renews contract with Russian Federation

NASA has named Kirk Shireman as the new manager of its worldwide Space Station (ISS) Program, based at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The space agency chief and former astronaut sent a letter to Congress on Wednesday explaining that he had purchased more seats on Russian-made Soyuz spacecraft to transport astronauts to the global Space Station.

Bolden blamed Congress for needing the additional cash for seats.

The stubbornness of the U.S. Congress is pushing the launch of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program further into the future, without a deadline in sight. A budget ready for the Senate floor would give $900 million to commercial crew.

Both SpaceX and its Dragon 2 vehicle, along with Boeing and its CST-100 spacecraft, have a test flight schedule that includes their first historic missions to the ISS.

The United States will continue to rely exclusively on Russian Federation to take astronauts to the orbiting outpost under the new contract, which runs until 2019, even as relations between the two countries have reached their lowest point since the Cold War.

Shireman also served as deputy ISS program manager from 2006 to 2013, and as the chair of the ISS Mission Management Team after managing several of its subsystem offices, and managed multiple offices for NASA’s Space Shuttle Program.

To meet the deadline, Bolden urged lawmakers to approve President Obama’s $1.24 billion budget request for the program, saying that otherwise Boeing and SpaceX would likely suspend all operations on the projects by next spring or summer.

The reliance on Russia for station crew transportation stands in sharp contrast to a congressional ban on imports of Russian rocket engines for U.S. military satellite launches. In 2010, I presented to Congress a plan to partner with American industry to return launches to the United States by 2015 if provided the requested level of funding. The safe, reliable, and cost-effective solutions being developed here at home will allow for more astronauts to conduct research aboard the space station, enable new jobs, and ensure U.S. leadership in spaceflight this century. Our Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contractors are on track today to provide certified crew transportation systems in 2017.

If Congress goes forward with these cuts, it “would likely result in funds running out for both contractors during the spring/summer of FY 2016”, Bolden said.