Schedule to Complete Space Station Is Advanced By WARREN E. LEARY Published: March 3, 2006 WASHINGTON, March 2 -- Partners in the International Space Station agreed Thursday to launch European and Japanese components earlier than originally planned to ensure they were functioning by 2010, when the orbiting space laboratory is to be fully assembled. Heads of the space agencies representing the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada met at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to work on a new plan for completing the $100 billion space station. At a news conference after the meeting, Michael D. Griffin, the NASA administrator, said the agency planned 16 more flights of the space shuttle to finish the station by the end of the decade. NASA's three shuttles ? Atlantis, Discovery and Endeavour ? are the only spacecraft large enough to carry major station components. The partner nations also agreed to increase to six the number of space station crew members in 2009. The station has been operating with a two-member crew since the Columbia disaster three years ago grounded the shuttle fleet. The number is to return to three with the next flight of the shuttle, as early as May 10. A space shuttle has flown once since the Columbia accident; the fleet was grounded again after the Discovery's mission in July. In its launching, more foam insulation fell from its external fuel tank than expected. The debris was blamed for fatally damaging the Columbia. Mr. Griffin said the adjusted sequence for building the station shifted priorities, moving up the completion of the station's platform. "We don't like that," Mr. Griffin said. "But confronted with a choice between having high confidence to complete the assembly of the station or utilizing it heavily as we built it and possibly not finishing, we chose the former course." One component dropped from the shuttle manifest is a Russian solar power platform. Anatolii Perminov, head of the Russian Federal Space Agency, said his country agreed to draw power from the American-built power system through 2015 in place of its own, and proposed plans to stockpile Russian Soyuz and Progress spacecraft to maintain the station. NASA said station construction flights could resume as early as August, if it is determined that the shuttle could be used safely. NASA now plans to launch Europe's Columbus research segment on the seventh construction flight, said Jean-Jacques Dordain, director general of the European Space Agency, moving it up by one flight. Keiji Tachikawa, president of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, said the first of three components for the large Japanese Experiment Module is now scheduled one flight earlier in 2007. Even though some components will be dropped and a new assembly schedule has been introduced, Mr. Griffin said the completed station would do what it was originally intended to do. "It's the same space station," he said. "The end product is very much as we envisioned it." In Washington on Thursday, the House Science Committee held a hearing on NASA's intention to hold down spending on space science for four years to pay $3 billion in added space shuttle expenses. Representative Sherwood Boehlert, the New York Republican who is the committee chairman, and other members of Congress expressed concern over the loss of research projects and the disruption of project teams. At the hearing, some scientists argued that NASA was sacrificing small space projects valuable for training graduate students and advancing science to sustain some big programs. Others said the United States was risking its leadership in space science. "I think these assessments are wrong," Mr. Griffin said when asked about the testimony. NASA still has a space science program and spends $5 billion a year on it, he said. The notion that the program was collapsing, he added, was an "almost hysterical" reaction. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/03/science/space/03station.html