International Space Station -- may need to be abandoned this year -- NASA comments to "Spaceflight Now" website

Astronauts may need to temporarily withdraw from the International Space Station before the end of this year if Russia is unable to resume manned flights of its Soyuz rocket after a failed cargo launch last week, according to the NASA official in charge of the outpost.

The doomed Soyuz rocket lifted off from Kazakhstan at 1300 GMT (9 a.m. EDT) on Wednesday. Credit: Energia

Despite a delivery of important logistics by the final space shuttle mission in July, safety concerns with landing Soyuz capsules in the middle of winter could force the space station to fly unmanned beginning in November, according to Michael Suffredini, NASA's space station program manager. "Logistically, we can support [operations] almost forever, but eventually if we don't see the Soyuz spacecraft, we'll probably going to unmanned ops before the end of the year," Suffredini said in an interview Thursday, one day after Russia lost a Soyuz rocket with an automated Progress resupply ship bound for the space station.
A Soyuz rocket rocket crashed Wednesday minutes after lifting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The third stage of the Soyuz-U rocket was firing when something caused the vehicle's RD-0110 engine to turn off early, scattering debris in the Altai region of Siberia more than 1,000 miles east of the launch site, according to Russian media reports.
The Soyuz-U's third stage is almost identical to equipment used on the Soyuz-FG booster that propels human crews into orbit, according to Roscosmos, the Russian space agency.
The problem Wednesday occurred nearly five-and-a-half minutes after liftoff when the rocket detected a low fuel pressure reading, according to Suffredini.
"They have data showing that the engine was shut down due to what looks like low pressure on the fuel side. They saw data all the way down to when the vehicle broke up," Suffredini said. "In this case, they at least know where the potential anomaly area is, so they can focus their attention there."
The Russian space agency set up a board to investigate the cause and recommend corrective actions, while other groups were tasked with reviewing implementation plans for Russia's manned space program and checking the quality of manufacturing throughout the Russian space industry.
"We will understand, to our satisfaction, the anomaly, what is believed to be the cause and how they resolved it," Suffredini said. "If we're not happy, we won't put our astronauts on the Soyuz."
NASA astronaut Daniel Burbank and cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin were preparing to launch to the space station Sept. 22, but that flight is likely going to be delayed until at least October in the wake of Wednesday's rocket failure.
Wednesday's Soyuz launch mishap was the second rocket failure in a row for Russia. A communications satellite launched Aug. 17 by a Proton rocket was stranded in the wrong orbit due to an anomaly with the mission's Breeze M upper stage.
Engineers will present data to space station management Monday morning that could lead to a formal decision to extend the stay of three astronauts on the space station beyond their scheduled Sept. 8 landing date.
Space station commander Andrey Borisenko, Russian cosmonaut Alexander Samokutyaev and NASA flight engineer Ronald Garan launched to the complex April 4 and planned to depart the lab and return to Earth on Sept. 8.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/station/exp28/110827unmannedops/