Future Shuttles To Mir Unlikely

Cape Canaveral – July 10, 1998 UPI – A top NASA manager says with

Russia preparing for Mir's demise next June, additional shuttle flights

to the 12-year-old space station are unlikely.

Although the Russian Space Agency has said it intends to send three

more crews to Mir before deorbiting the outpost, NASA shuttle-Mir

program manager Jim Van Laak said probably only two more Russian crews

will be assigned to the station.

NASA's direct involvement with Mir ended last month with the return

of astronaut Andrew Thomas, the seventh and final U.S. crewmember to

serve on the Russian outpost. However, the agency is keeping a close

watch on how Russian space officials are managing their limited

resources to make sure support for Mir does not come at the expense of

Russian commitments for the planned International Space Station.

Van Laak said for a while NASA toyed with the idea of additional

shuttle flights to Mir, but because of technical constraints, there is

little the shuttle could do to assist with the station's deorbit.

He said: "There's no credible plan at this time for another shuttle

visit to the Mir. That's not to say that an emergency situation might

not cause us to want to do that. But fundamentally, from the point of

view of what we could contribute to a deorbit scenario, there's not a

whole lot to offer."