The service life of the ISS ends in 2015 but participants of the project - Canada, the European Union, Japan, Russia and the United States - are currently discussing ways to extend its operation until 2020.

"Let the experts decide on the work of the station until 2020," ISS flight engineer Alexander Kaleri said in a TV link with the Russian mission control. "If they make such a decision, the ISS could work until then."

"The question is how the station will be developed and what would be the nature of experiments [on board]," said the Russian cosmonaut, who manually docked the ISS with the Progress M-08M space freighter last Saturday.

Anatoly Perminov, the head of the Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), said in September that the station, which has been in orbit for 10 years, had great potential and could remain operational for another decade.

The current ISS crew comprises Russian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin, Alexander Kaleri and Oleg Skripochka and NASA astronauts Scott J. Kelly, Douglas Wheelock and Shannon Walker.

earlier related report
Progress Docks On Auto
Moscow, Russia (SPX) Nov 02, 2010 - Russian cargo transport vehicle Progress M-08M after a free flight for three days docked with the International Space Station (ISS). The contact of the docking unit of the ISS Russian Segment Pirs Module occurred at 8:35:43 p.m. Moscow time.

A rendezvous with the station, its fly-around and hovering were provided in the automatic mode. At a range of 194 m because of the interference appeared in the Kurs rendezvous system radio channel the vehicle angular position oscillation occurred.

In this connection Technical Management accepted a decision about going into teleoperation control mode (TOCM) to complete the berthing operation. It was performed by the Russian cosmonauts of the crew with high professional skill together with specialists of Lead Operational Control Team (LOCT) working at Mission Control Center near Moscow (MCC-M).

All dynamic operations were conducted by the mission control specialists and the ISS Expedition 25 crew working onboard the Station under control of Technical Management (Technical Manager - RSC Energia President, General Designer V.A. Lopota).

At MCC-M when performing the completing operations for the vehicle/ISS rendezvous and docking the following persons were present: representatives of the State Commission (A.N. Perminov, the Chairman - Head of Roscosmos), management and the Corporation specialists, representatives of Roscosmos, NASA, allied enterprises and organizations of the branch of industry.

Based on the data of telemetry information and reports of the ISS crew the Station and vehicle onboard systems operate in the design modes.

The vehicle delivered cargo of about 2.6 t to the Station. The cargo content: the fuel, water, food, oxygen reserves (including fresh products); sanitary-hygienic and medical support aids, as well as personal protection aids of the Station crew; science hardware and equipment for the ISS RS systems; operations data file, parcels for the crew, presents for the New-Year's holiday including. 325 kg of cargo is envisaged for the USOS.

The mission control and monitoring of the vehicle and Station systems status in the rendezvous and docking phase were provided by the Lead Operational Control Team (LOCT) organized of specialists of RSC Energia, MCC-M and enterprises of the branch of industry. The flight director is First Deputy General Designer of RSC Energia V.A. Soloviev.

The ISS RS consists of: Functional Cargo Block Zarya, Modules Zvezda, Pirs, Poisk and Rassvet, manned vehicles Soyuz TMA-19 and Soyuz TMA-M, cargo vehicles Progress M-07M and Progress M-08M.

The ISS crew: Russian cosmonauts F. Yurchikhin, A. Kalery and O. Skripochka and U.S. astronauts D. Wheelock (the ISS-25 commander), Sh. Walker and S. Kelly.

Technical Commission began to work at RSC Energia to reveal the causes of the interference occurrence in the Kurs rendezvous system radio channel.

Source: RIA Novosti News Agency

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