With the Russian-built Service Module for the International Space Station at least eight months behind schedule, NASA is preparing to build a backup module to at least temporarily replace it, a key NASA official reported.
     Wil Trafton, head of the NASA space flight office, told Reuters January 10 that NASA had approved last month construction of an interim control module that would carry out some of the Service Module's functions during the delay.
     "We're looking at two vehicles," Trafton said. "There's a Russian proposal on the table and there is a vehicle we're looking at in this country that has flown before in a classified program."
     He expected a decision to be made on the interim module by the end of the month. The cost of the module, expected to be $100 million, would come out of project reserve funds.
     A more permanent replacement for the Service Module system was considered, Trafton said, but could not be afforded under the present NASA space station budget.
     In December, NASA officials confirmed that the launch date of the Russian-built Service Module had slipped from April 1998 to at least the end of the year, more than one year after the launch of the first space station element.
     The delay in the launch of the Service Module also delayed the launch of the first crew for the station. The three-man crew, including one American, was set to fly to the station on a Soyuz capsule in May 1998. The crew needs the Service Module in place as it is designed to serve as an initial habitation module until permanent modules are launched later in the assembly of the station.
     Russian officials explained the delays in the Service Module are due to funding shortfalls in the Russian space program. They hope to restore funding for the Service Module later this month.

Norman Thagard, the first American to stay aboard the Russian space station Mir, donated his space suit from that mission to the National Air and Space Museum in a ceremony January 14.
     Thagard became the first American to go into orbit on a Russian spacecraft when he and two Russian cosmonauts were launched on a Soyuz in March 1995 from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Thagard spent three and a half months in orbit in Mir, returning in early July 1995 on the shuttle Atlantis after the first shuttle-Mir docking.
     The veteran of five space missions left the astronaut corps a year ago. He is currently a visiting professor and director of external relations at the Florida A & M/Florida State University College of Engineering in Tallahassee.
     Also in attendance at the Tuesday morning ceremony were Shannon Lucid, who became the second American to stay on Mir with a six-month tour last year, and Yuri Usachev, a Russian cosmonaut who was on Mir for much the same time as Lucid.