NASA has stopped all work on a “lifeboat” for the International Space Station. The unpowered crew rescue vehicle (CRV) could have allowed seven astronauts to glide safely to Earth in an emergency.
Without the CRV, the crew might have to be limited to only three astronauts—who could escape in a docked Soyuz capsule. The cut could hit the ISS science programme hard. With so few astronauts aboard, there will be precious little time for experiments in microgravity.
“We would want to avoid going down to three crew members,” says Franco Bonacina, a spokesman for the European Space Agency (ESA) in Paris which is a partner…
