Support for the Space Station

[j d worthington]

Looks like it may be extended...

Space station may get support past 2016 - Yahoo! News

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA may fly its next-generation space vehicle to the international space station through 2020, four years longer than the agency had originally planned to fly to the outpost, an official said Tuesday.

NASA is now building the capsule-shaped Orion with the assumption that the spacecraft will visit the space station twice a year through 2020 to rotate out crews or service the orbiting lab.

"We're going to assume that the station carries on," said Jeff Hanley, manager of NASA's Constellation Program, which is developing the vehicle and rockets to go to the moon and later to Mars.

Astronauts are scheduled to start flying Orion by 2014, about four years after the space shuttles are grounded permanently in 2010.

NASA and its international partners hope to finish construction on the space station in 2010.

That there aren't any definite plans to extend the operation beyond 2016 is troubling, but I suppose we'll have to wait and see how well it "performs" before there's any real commitment beyond that point...

The story is from AP, by Mike Schneider, titled "Space station may get support past 2016" (which, given the line in the story about it not being planned at this point, seems a bit misleading), and is datelined Tues., Jan. 30, 2007.