US space station research in a coma, NASA contemplates pulling the plug

Reuters :After three years of continual cuts in its budget, US research on the International Space Station may be completely killed off to fix a $100 million shortfall in NASA’s budget. When ISS was originally proposed twenty years ago, nearly 27 hours of astronaut time per week was set aside by NASA to conduct scientific experiments. However, since ISS has had three instead of the proposed seven astronauts in orbit at any one time, the amount of time set aside for science has dropped to 2.5 hours per week. Delays and cost over-runs has also led to many of the proposed scientific instruments for ISS to remain stuck on the ground. A $350 million cut in NASA’s life science budget last year helped bring the research program to the point of collapse. Fixing the budget shortfall by cancelling the remainging ISS research budget would bring NASA’s proposed Moon-Mars program back on track say NASA officials.