Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, November 5, 1993                   TAG: 9311050076
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

U.S., RUSSIA COMMIT TO SPACE-STATION PLAN

Included in the plan are 10 shuttle visits to the existing Russian space station, Mir, in the next four years to lay the groundwork for joint construction.

"The Russians are joining in the American-led space station program, and they are giving up their independent space station," NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin announced Thursday. Goldin signed the agreement with his Russian counterpart, Yuri N. Koptev.

"This plan describes a new relationship between the U.S. and Russian space agencies which will advance their national space programs and benefit their respective national aerospace industries," the agreement said.

The United States has been working on a space station since 1984 and revised and shrunk the design a half dozen times, most recently this summer.

"This is it," Goldin said. "We have to start flying."

The original U.S. design would have housed eight astronauts; at one time, that was cut in half. The new agreement envisions a capacity of six - perhaps seven, Goldin said. Two will be Russians. The other spots will be open to Americans and other international partners.

The U.S. Mission Control Center in Houston will run the station, while the Russian command site in Kaliningrad will be the backup.

The plan expands on an agreement to fly a cosmonaut on a shuttle mission in January and to launch a U.S. astronaut to the Mir in 1995 and bring back the station's crew aboard a shuttle three months later.

Goldin went to Capitol Hill on Thursday to explain the plan to Congress, which must approve any such radical change in American space activities.