KOROLYOV. April 9 (c-AVN) - NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said Sunday the U.S. will likely fail to create a new spaceship by 2010 when the space shuttle program is closed. Griffin told a news conference at Mission Control at Korloyov, following the return of Expedition 12 from the International Space Station that, NASA, of course, will not be able to meet the 2010 deadline, and more time will pass from 2010 to the end of the work to develop a new spaceship.
The U.S. will rely on Russian and other foreign colleagues to have access to the ISS in this time span, he said.
Griffin also announced that the U.S. is working on a piloted research spaceship to replace space shuttles.
The new spaceship will fly to the ISS, beyond the low earth orbit and to the Moon, the NASA administrator said.
Griffin said the US will continue using Russian spaceships to ferry astronauts and cargoes to the ISS, and thanked the Russian Space Agency for support after the suspension of shuttle flights over the shuttle Columbia disaster. He added that the U.S. will count on Russian colleagues in the future.
An official with the Brazilian Space Agency, Raimondo Mussi, told journalists that the first Brazilian cosmonaut Marcos Pontes, just back from space, will be presented with a state award. sd