AS AMERICA mourned the death of the seven astronauts, attention also turned towards the three men still in orbit aboard the International Space Station. Are their lives now at risk as well? And what’s in store for the space station, following the indefinite grounding of the shuttle fleet?
NASA immediately informed the ISS crew members – astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit, and cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin – about the disaster. “They mourned the loss of their friends and colleagues,” says Bill Readdy, associate administrator of space flight at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “We assured them that job one…
