Change In Next ISS Crew Lineup Considered   

U.S. and Russian space officials are considering once againchanging the crew of the next mission to the international space station, a Russian space official said Wednesday.

The proposed change came after NASA decided to replace astronaut William McArthur with Leroy Chiao, citing unspecified health reasons, said Sergei Gorbunov, a spokesman for the Russian space agency Rosaviakosmos. Valery Tokarev was to be the Russian on the mission, to begin April 19.

Chiao had been training with Tokarev at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City outside Moscow, but the two apprently didn't hit it off, a Russian Aviation and Space Agency official told Reuters Wednesday. Instead of the Chiao-Tokarev team, the agencies are now likely to send Michael Fincke and Gennady Padalka, who have spent considerable time training together, Gorbunov said.

So the trip instead will be made by cosmonaut Gennady Padalka and U.S. astronaut Michael Fincke, who were previously slated to fly to the ISS in the fall as Expedition 10, Gorbunov said.The switch will be the second for the Expedition 9 crew, which is scheduled to lift off for the ISS on April 19.

"One of the factors was a psychological incompatibility," said another official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Gorunov said the change is expected to be approved in the next few days. Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers from the European Space Agency is expected to fill the third seat in the Soyuz spacecraft flight to the space station. But he would spend only a week at the station, as the ISS has been limited to two full-time residents since last year's suspension of the U.S. space shuttle program in the wake of the Columbia disaster, which left the Soyuz as the only vehicle to take astronauts to and from the station.

Switching the crews would change the scientific programs to be conducted aboard the station, Valery Bogomolov, deputy director of the Institute of Medical Biological Problems, Gorunov told the ITAR-Tass news agency.

FMI:  www.spaceflight.nasa.gov/station