NASA: U.S. might have to abandon station

The United States will have to evacuate American astronauts from the International Space Station in 2012 if the Congress fails to swiftly renew a legislative exemption that enables the purchase of Russian Soyuz spacecraft, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said today.

"If we don't get a renewed exemption, then the last U.S. or international partner astronauts -- by which I mean Canadian, European, Japanese -- have to be down off the station by the end of December 2011," Griffin said in a telephone interview.

NASA in 2005 was granted an exemption from the Iran Non-Proliferation Act of 2000 that enables the agency to buy crew transportation services aboard Soyuz spacecraft from the Russian Federal Space Agency.

The law was passed to prevent Russia from supplying Iran with nuclear technology, but the exemption allows NASA to buy crew transport services on Soyuz through the end of 2011.

Soyuz spacecraft take about three years to build. Griffin said NASA consequently needs to obtain an exemption within the next couple of months to avoid a situation in which the $100 billion station is circling Earth with only Russians aboard it in 2012.

"So either we get a contract (for Soyuz services) in place by early 2009 or the circumstance I just spoke of will come to pass," Griffin said.

Griffin said the recent Russian invasion of Georgia is making it more difficult to push through legilation for any exemption.

"Given the Russian invasion of Georgia and the comments that have been made by a number of senators and congressmen on the manner, I can't honestly say that I'm optimistic," he said. "But I will say that we're working it as hard as we can and doing our best to point out the consequences of not obtaining that exemption."

The situation prompted Griffin late last week to ask shuttle program managers to look into what it would take to keep the shuttle fleet flying beyond its current 2010 retirement date.

"Honestly, it was not more than a few minutes after I first heard the news about the Russian invasion of Georgia that I came to the conclusion that the ability to get a waiver could easily be in question," he said.

"It seemed fairly obvious to me that it could be difficult to get a waiver. And it seemed fairly obvious to me that a new administration and a new Congress might not want to put us in a position where the United States was unable to fly our astronauts to the station after having spent $100 billion building it," he said.

"And it might be that a new administration and a new Congress might not want to abrogate our agreements with our international partners. Well if they don't want to renew (the exemption) and if they don't want to abbrogate our agreements and if they don't want to have no U.S. crew on the station, then the only answer is they would have to continue flying the shuttle, and NASA might be directed to do that," he said.

"And I want to know what it would take to do that if we were told to do it."

The ball park figure: In excess of $3 billion per year, Griffin said.