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WASHINGTON — House lawmakers have introduced legislation authorizing
three additional space shuttle flights before the fleet's scheduled
2010 retirement, including the launch of a science probe removed from
the manifest after the 2003 Columbia accident.

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The proposed NASA Authorization Act of 2008 designates $150 million
for a space shuttle flight to deliver the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer
(AMS) to the International Space Station in 2010.


Two other flights that NASA already has budgeted for and placed on its
manifest as contingencies while awaiting White House approval would
become part of the official manifest under the bill introduced last
week by Rep. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), chairman of the House Science and
Technology space and aeronautics subcommittee, ranking minority member
Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.), and Reps. Ralph Hall (R-Texas) and Bart
Gordon (D-Tenn.).


The Senate Commerce Committee has not yet introduced its version of
the bill, and Congress still must appropriate the money needed to add
the shuttle mission to deliver the AMS.


The AMS is a U.S. Department of Energy-led experiment, with 16
international partners, to measure charged particles outside Earth's
atmosphere. NASA agreed in 1995 to launch AMS aboard a space shuttle
to the space station, but constraints resulting from the Columbia
accident, including a two-and-a-half year suspension of flights,
pushed AMS off the manifest.


The experiment has wide support from members of Congress, who
frequently have asked NASA to try and find a way to fit AMS in. In the
bill that funded NASA for this year, Congress directed the agency to
study the matter.


NASA responded in a February report to the House and Senate
appropriations committees that the two contingency flights are fully
loaded with large spare parts that only the shuttle can transport to
the space station. Adding a space shuttle flight in 2010 would cost
between $300 million and $400 million, the report said, and keeping
the space shuttle flying in 2011 would cost between $2.7 billion and
$4 billion.


"In summary, the existing space shuttle flight schedule, and
potentially up to two contingency logistics flights, may be achievable
before the [space shuttle's September] 2010 retirement. However, the
program does not have a significant amount of margin to accommodate an
additional flight for AMS without significant impacts to future
exploration goals, cost, and possibly safety," the report said.


The authorization bill sets a $19.2 billion NASA budget for 2009, a
$1.9 million increase over 2008. In addition to that figure, the bill
seeks $1 billion to accelerate NASA's space shuttle replacement
vehicles: the Orion crew capsule and Ares 1 rocket. NASA officials
have said they could speed development of those vehicles by about two
years — to 2013 — with an additional $2 billion.


The bill also extends the possibility of U.S. participation in the
international space station for four additional years by directing
NASA to "take no steps" that would prevent the United States from
utilizing the space station after 2016.