Space Shuttle: June 2008 Archives

According to sources within NASA's International Space Station Progamme office, managers are still considering whether they want to leave the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module on orbit despite the agency's earlier denials that that could happen. But the current baseline has it returning

Another major change is the possible altering of the rules for Space Shuttle, Soyuz docking at ISS. The idea is that now that the orbiter and Soyuz "docking ports are farther away [from each other]" and ISS will be doing "indirect handovers," with the station crew expansion to six from May 2009, for Shuttle mission flexibility the docking rules can change

Previously Soyuz dockings have not been allowed to occur while the orbiter is on-station and so agency officials want to see if it makes sense to plan for a Soyuz docking or undocking during a Shuttle mission

NASA is also altering its rescue mission planning, also known as launch-on-need flights. The new launch-on-need approach is to use the next flight with the planned cargo complement to rescue the previous flight if necessary, so the concept of STS-3xx is ending