Official Letter

Associate Administrator for Space Flight

Chairman of the ISS Multilateral Coordination Board

Mr. Frederick D. Gregory

Dear Mr. Gregory:

The Russian Aviation and Space Agency would like to inform you of its intention to nominate space flight participant Lance bass, for the October, 2002 Soyuz TMA mission. We ask for the cooperation of all the ISS partners in this endeavor as it will ensure RASA's ability to meet Soyuz production obligations in 2002 and allow us certain surplus for the coming year. We recognize this nomination is late with reference to the MCOP crew selection guidelines, however extenuating circumstances regarding funding forces us to come up with this late nomination. We do seek to follow the MCOP processes, we are committed to follow them in the future and hope that at the upcoming face-to-face MCOP meeting planned for July 16-17 in Montreal the partnership will very seriously consider Mr. Bass's nomination for the Soyuz TMA flight in October, 2002.

Specifically with respect to this nomination, we have found Mr. Bass meets the criteria in the MCOP Crew Criteria agreements. We recognize that his training will be shorter than desired and we will closely monitor his progress to assure his flight will be conducted safely and that he is fully ready for launch in October. We also recognize that Mr. Bass will have a challenge to achieve the desired level of Russian language skill. But both of the Soyuz professional crewmembers for this flight have excellent English language skills. The Commander, Sergei Zalyotin, served in Houston as GCTC permanent representative and Frank DeWinne have been trained in the United Kingdom as a test pilot and then was trained extensively at Star City. He speaks excellent English and Russian. Finally, the flight activities planned for Mr. Bass will be tailored to accommodate the shorter than usual training template.

A final consideration for crew assessment for this mission is the first-flight nature of the modified Soyuz TMA vehicle. Our experts have extensively studies the impacts to the crew training for this new vehicle and have determined that, particularly for the right seat occupant, the crew duties are far more simpler [sic] than for the older Soyuz TM vehicle, especially for launch and orbit insertion. This will greatly mitigate any training concerns for a right seat space flight participant in this vehicle.

We standby ready to respond to any questions you may have regarding this flight nomination and ask your understanding in considering it. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

[Signed]

M.V. Sinelschikov
Head of Space Flight Directorate
Russian Aviation and Space Agency