Russian craft re-supplies space station

By David Filipov, Globe Staff, 2/5/2003

OSCOW -- A Russian cargo craft successfully docked at the International Space Station yesterday, bringing food, equipment, and a tangible measure of relief to a crew that lost its major supply line, and escape route, after the shuttle Columbia disaster.

Russian and Western officials at ground control outside Moscow watched on a huge screen as the unmanned Progress M-47 cargo ship, operating on autopilot, attached itself to the orbital outpost some 240 miles above the Earth.

''One degree . . . oops! We didn't even feel it!'' Russian cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin, on board the station with two Americans, could be heard saying over mission control loudspeakers as the Progress docked a minute before schedule, after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Sunday.

''We have contact . . . we have a mechanical lock,'' a ground control operator intoned, bringing a loud round of applause from the packed crowd at the sprawling center north of Moscow who watched an event that would have seemed routine a week ago.

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The docking was one small step to resupply of the $95 billion space station, one great confidence booster for the once mighty, oft-maligned, and cash-poor Russian space program.

''In Russia there has always been a problem with cash, but there has never been lack of brains,'' said Valeri Ryumin, deputy director of Energia, the company that builds the Progress.

Moscow had planned only four to five space missions this year but now may be called upon to launch more to deliver sufficient crews and fuel to the station. With shuttle flights postponed pending a Columbia investigation, the station will depend on Russian Soyuz manned capsules and Progress cargo ships.

Although NASA has not specified yet how long the shuttle program will be grounded, Russian space officials are assuming the hiatus will last more than a year, said space agency spokesman Sergei Gorbunov.

As technicians from the United States, Russia, and other nations in the 16-nation space station project discussed how to run the half-completed orbital craft during a hiatus in the shuttle flights, Russian officials reported that the Progress docking had gone off without a hitch.

Yuri Semyonov, the head of Energia, said the Progress brought about 2 3/4 tons of fuel, food, and other supplies, and 18 1/2 gallons of water for Budarin and US astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit.

''The most critical situation is with water . . . since in the past US space shuttles have delivered a lot of water,'' Semyonov said.

The station has a water-regeneration unit, which mission control spokesman Valeri Lyndin said would provide the crew with sufficient reserves until the next Progress supply mission, set for June.

More troublesome was how well the crew, which arrived at the station in November and was scheduled to return to Earth when the shuttle brought a new crew up in March, would hold up. Mission control chief Vladimir Solovyov said the crew probably would have to stay on until early May, when the next Soyuz mission can bring them down.

In a radio exchange Monday evening with former President George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush, Bowersox said the crew was ''doing fine up here.''

''We're sad at the loss of our friends, but we're also concerned about all of you on the ground, the way you're reacting,'' said Bowersox, who along with his crewmates listened to a radio broadcast of the memorial service yesterday for Columbia's crew. ''We know that everyone down there shares a lot of pain.'' We believe we're going to be able to succeed and carry on.''

The Columbia disaster has sparked concern in Russia that NASA may decide to leave the station temporarily unmanned. That would leave Russia without any manned space program for the first time since 1961.

''We must do everything to prevent the collapse of the International Space Station project, which is the accomplishment of all of mankind,'' Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said yesterday on a visit to the Khrunichev space center.

Material from the Associated Press and Reuters was used in this report.

This story ran on page A13 of the Boston Globe on 2/5/2003.
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