The heads of the five agency partners of the International Space Station said Thursday they have agreed on a new plan to complete construction of the station that will focus for now on completing its assembly rather than on utilizing the facility for research.
That plan, the partners admitted, depends on NASA's ability to reactivate the space shuttle fleet safely and on mounting 16 more flights to the orbiting facility before retiring the three remaining spacecraft in fiscal year 2010. That number means 12 fewer flights than originally scheduled to complete the station and maintain its science activities.
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"What you're seeing today is the result of 10 months of work between the United States and our partners," NASA administrator Michael Griffin told reporters at a joint new conference. He shared the podium with Virendra Jha, acting Canadian Space Agency president; Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA's director general; Keiji Tachikawa, president of JAXA, and Anatony Perminov, head of Roskosmos, the Russian space agency.