Obama administration approves space station extension, NASA says

The Obama administration has given NASA the go-ahead to operate the International Space Station through at least 2024, the agency announcedWednesday, allowing government and private-sector researchers to count on at least another decade of operations, officials said.

Bill Gerstenmaier, chief of space operations at NASA Headquarters, said the expanded lifetime will encourage increased commercial use of the lab complex, solidify the commercial launch market and provide critical insights into technology development and human physiology needed for eventual flights to deep space targets like Mars.

"This is a tremendous announcement for us here in the space station world and really for all of human spaceflight and the international partnership aboard the space station," he told reporters. "It's allowing us to have a planning horizon that is really 10 years long, it extends from 2014 now to at least 2024. That really changes the way folks see their investment, especially the commercial side."

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A three-man crew successfully brought the Olympic torch to the International Space Station. For safety reasons, the torch will not be lit.

The Obama administration canceled the Constellation moon program and ordered a dramatic change of course. NASA was told to develop commercial manned spacecraft to ferry crews to and from the station and to build a new heavy-lift rocket to propel Constellation program Orion capsules on deep space missions to nearby asteroids and, eventually, Mars.

At roughly the same time, the administration announced that it planned to extend the life of the International Space Station by at least five years, from 2015 to 2020.

Late last year, NASA, its prime contractor Boeing and the agency's international partners completed a detailed engineering analysis that showed the lab complex could be safely operated through 2020 and, with a bit of luck and continued funding, through 2028, the 30th anniversary of the start of station assembly.

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Obama administration approves space station extension, NASA says