CAPE CANAVERAL — A failed resupply mission this week has again highlighted the International Space Station reliance on a single Russian spacecraft to fly astronauts up and down from orbit.
If problems forced an extended grounding of Russia’s Soyuz crew vehicle, which shares some common systems with the robotic Progress cargo freighter lost in orbit after its launch Tuesday, no other ride would be available in the near term. In a worst-case scenario, the station might have to be abandoned.
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But if schedules stay on track, two new U.S. spacecraft could be ready to launch astronauts from the Space Coast in two or three years, resuming human launches from U.S. soil that ended with NASA’s retirement of the space shuttle program in 2011.
“If you look at it as a global effort, we need to have a redundant way to get humans back and forth from space,” said Chris Ferguson, a former shuttle astronaut who is now director of crew and mission systems for Boeing’s commercial crew program. “What you see here today, it goes a long way to making that happen.”
