To preserve an option to fly an additional Space Shuttle mission this year to perform maintenance on the International Space Station, Shuttle and Station managers today decided to formally plan a revision to the content of Shuttle mission STS-101.
The planning will allow the orbiter Atlantis to visit the Station in April if needed, ahead of the arrival of the Russian Zvezda service module, to perform maintenance.
However, managers could decide as late as March to return to the original planned content for STS-101 and eliminate the added mission based on the launch date selected for the Russian Zvezda service module by the Station program.
The option including a Station maintenance flight would distribute the original content of STS-101 between two Shuttle missions. The first mission, now targeted for launch no earlier than April 13 aboard Atlantis, will retain the STS-101 designation but be a 10-day long flight to perform maintenance on the International Space Station's Zarya and Unity modules.
The second mission, which would be designated STS-106 and remains under review by managers, would be a Zvezda module outfitting mission that would dock with the Station about one month after Zvezda's launch.
The plan for near-term Shuttle and International Space Station launches now includes:
