U.S. CODE

U.S. Code

§ 16765. ISS completion

(a) Policy

It is the policy of the United States to achieve diverse and growing utilization of, and benefits from, the ISS.

(b) Elements, capabilities, and configuration criteria

The Administrator shall ensure that the ISS will—

(1) be assembled and operated in a manner that fulfills international partner agreements, as long as the Administrator determines that the Shuttle can safely enable the United States to do so;

(2) be used for a diverse range of microgravity research, including fundamental, applied, and commercial research, consistent with section 16655 of this title;

(3) have an ability to support a crew size of at least 6 persons, unless the Administrator transmits to the Committee on Science of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate not later than 60 days after December 30, 2005, a report explaining why such a requirement should not be met, the impact of not meeting the requirement on the ISS research agenda and operations and international partner agreements, and what additional funding or other steps would be required to have an ability to support crew size ^[1] of at least 6 persons;

(4) support Crew Exploration Vehicle docking and automated docking of cargo vehicles or modules launched by either heavy-lift or commercially-developed launch vehicles;

(5) support any diagnostic human research, on-orbit characterization of molecular crystal growth, cellular research, and other research that NASA believes is necessary to conduct, but for which NASA lacks the capacity to return the materials that need to be analyzed to Earth; and

(6) be operated at an appropriate risk level.

(1) Policy

The Administrator shall ensure that the ISS can have available, if needed, sufficient logistics and on-orbit capabilities to support any potential period during which the Space Shuttle or its follow-on crew and cargo systems are unavailable, and can have available, if needed, sufficient surge delivery capability or prepositioning of spares and other supplies needed to accommodate any such hiatus.

(2) Plan

Not later than 60 days after December 30, 2005, and before making any change in the ISS assembly sequence in effect on December 30, 2005, the Administrator shall transmit to the Committee on Science of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate a plan to carry out the policy described in paragraph (1).

[1] So in original. Probably should be “a crew size”.

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