Decius wrote:
] ] A Russian space capsule now docked at the international
] ] space station will be used to bring the space station
] ] crew back to Earth now that the U.S. shuttle fleet is
] ] grounded, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said today.

And so it begins -

It would seem that next two expedition crews are currently undergoing Soyuz training now, and have been trimmed from 3 to 2 crewmembers. The worst part of this is that it means that ISS science is going to slow to the barest minimum since Exp1. Just maintaining the ISS is a full-time job for two crewmembers. These potentially exciting research expeditions have been relegated to skeleton crew status.

Honestly, I think they should have taken up the current expedition's offer to leave them up there for an extended mission to study long duration spaceflight. At least then, there would be a scientific silver lining in this dense cloud layer.