June 29--Sunday's destruction of the unmanned SpaceX cargo ship bound for the International Space Station is raising questions about whether astronauts on board will have enough food and water in coming months.
NASA officials said Sunday the space station's crew was in no immediate danger and that they had supplies until the end of October.
Yet in April, NASA officials gave a less rosy outlook.
In a presentation to an advisory board, officials detailed lower levels of vital supplies. According to slides from the report, food stockpiles would hit "the reserve level" in July and run out Sept. 5.
Water would run out about the same time, according to the slides, in the event the station's water processing system failed.
NASA officials said Sunday that they were worried about the continued functioning of the station's water system. Parts needed for the filtration system were among the cargo destroyed in Sunday's SpaceX mission.
Replacements for the water filtration parts had also been destroyed Oct. 28 when another cargo shuttle operated by Orbital Sciences for NASA exploded just seconds after liftoff.
NASA must now rebuild the parts for the third time, which will take weeks, said Michael Suffredini, manager of the space station program.
"We are reaching the limit where we'd say we would stop using the water processor," Suffredini said at a news conference Sunday.
Stephanie Schierholz, a NASA spokeswoman, said that the food and water supply estimates given in the April presentation had been "very conservative projections" that NASA has since revised.
NASA gave contracts to two companies -- SpaceX and Orbital Sciences -- to shuttle supplies to the space station so that one hauler would be available if the other failed. But now both companies' rockets remain grounded as investigations continue into the cause of the two disasters.
In addition, a Russian resupply ship was destroyed when officials lost control of it in late April and it burned up as it fell back to Earth.
"Who would have ever predicted we would have lost these three vehicles," William Gerstenmaier, a NASA associate administrator, said at the Sunday news conference.
The focus now turns to another Russian cargo mission scheduled for Friday. The shipment includes food, water and other provisions. The rocket is set to blast off from Kazakhstan at 12:55 a.m. Eastern.
Suffredini said that a Japanese cargo ship scheduled for an Aug. 16 launch would also be loaded heavily with water.
NASA tries to have six months of supplies on board the station at all times, Suffredini said.
If supplies dwindle to 45 days, he said, the agency would begin arrangements to bring the astronauts back to Earth.
"We always have a vehicle there that can bring them home safely," Suffredini said. "We're not even close to that kind of conversation today."
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