Shuffles Seats Due To Continued Shuttle Delays

At this writing, NASA still hopes to launch the shuttle Discovery next week on its latest flight to the International Space Station... but the space agency is also preparing contingencies just in case the STS-119 mission, and future shuttle launches, suffer from still more delays.

On Tuesday, the International Space Station Program announced a change in how two future crew members will return home. NASA astronaut Nicole Stott and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Robert Thirsk will swap seats on the space shuttle and Russian Soyuz spacecraft to help ensure a timely homecoming for Thirsk.

Specifically, NASA is concerned STS-129, currently scheduled to launch in November 2009, may suffer domino delays caused by the current situation with STS-119. Such a delay could result in extending Thirsk's mission beyond the six-month duration preferred for station crew members.

Thirsk will launch to the station on a Soyuz in May and return to Earth on that same vehicle in November, instead of aboard space shuttle Atlantis at the end of the STS-129 mission as originally planned.

Stott, who will launch to the station on shuttle Discovery's STS-128 mission, will return aboard Atlantis with the STS-129 crew. She had been slated to come home aboard the Soyuz that Thirsk now will occupy.

FMI: www.nasa.gov/station