Prologue
This report was first released to the public in prepublication form in September of 2002. Since that time the language of the report has been edited but the body of the report has not been altered to reflect any events that have taken place during the past several months. Two of these events had or are expected to have a significant impact on topics discussed in this report. The first was the passage of the Fiscal Year 2003 Appropriations Bill, which directed that funding be restored for the completion of the ISS combustion rack and for initial development of the advanced animal and plant growth habitats for use on the ISS centrifuge. These were among the several important pieces of experimental equipment cited as issues of concern by the task group. The second event is the catastrophic loss of the space shuttle Columbia with all of its crew on February 1, 2003. This tragedy is expected to have numerous, but currently unknowable, downstream consequences for the future of the International Space Station and laboratory research in space.
