WASHINGTON - A planned international space station, hobbled by problems in Russia, may cost the United States US$7 billion more than it budgeted and be delayed up to three years, an expert panel told NASA Thursday.
The United States has pitched in more than $17 billion as its share of the cost of the global station and will probably have to come up with the additional money to keep it going. European, Japanese, Canadian, and Italian space agencies have also contributed. The panel also said the station is likely to be delayed one to three years beyond its expected completion date of December 2003.
While the panel said the National Aeronautics and Space Administration had an unrealistic vision of how much the program would cost and how long it would take, it also faulted Russia. The Russian space agency is slated to provide a service module for the project, but Russian funding problems left over from fiscal 1997 are delaying parts for it, the report said, and it doesn't look like Russian funding is forthcoming in the foreseeable future.
The space station, conceived in the early 1980s, has been repeatedly redesigned and rebudgeted to try to keep costs in line and the program on schedule. It has been a popular target of critics in the US Congress, especially last year, as the world watched a series of mishaps aboard the orbiting Russian space station Mir with US astronauts aboard.
In the panel's view, the Russian space agency cannot handle both the Mir program and its commitments to the international space station.
Reuters contributed to this story.
