Jorg Festel-Buecht, director of the ESA Human Spaceflight Programs, said that ESA firmly intends to carry out two flights of European astronauts to the ISS next year.
According to Festel-Buecht, one of these flights will be rather short and would take place in April, while the second one in October – may last up to 6 months. ESA is currently conducting negotiations about it with the Russian Federal Space Agency and seems to be very much interested in a long flight of a European astronaut.
At the same time, the director of the ESA Human Spaceflight Programs specified that the third space tourist, American Gregory Olsen, whose commercial short-term flight on the ISS has been scheduled for April 2005, may become a rival to the European spationaut. For this reason, ESA positively rated the proposal of the Russian Federal Space Agency to NASA about prolonging the stay of ISS expedition 10 to one year.
In this case a space tourist could be included in the crew of the Russian spaceship Soyuz. “If the American crew astronaut can remain on the station for a year, this will solve the problem”, said Jorg Festel-Buecht.
It will not be apparently easy for the Americans to take such a decision, he added. The next flight to the ISS is scheduled for April 19th and will be composed of Russian cosmonaut Guennady Padalka, American astronaut Michael Fincke and ESA Dutch spationaut Andr¿ Kuipers.
