According to NASA officals, U.S. lawmakers passed an exemption allowing the agency to buy rides from the Russians. Therefore the political stalemate that threatened to boot the United States off the International Space Station eased on Thursday.

Senator Bill Nelson moved a bill through the Senate to give the space agency a billion dollar birthday present. If appropriated, the money will delay the shuttle's 2010 retirement by a year, allowing the U.S. to extend its participation in the International Space Station.

The Soyuz seats are critical to the space program because NASA plans to temporarily shut down the space shuttle program in 2010. The next generation of spacecraft will not be ready until 2015, at the earliest, under current plans.
 
Without authorization to spend tax dollars on Russian Soyuz spacecraft and other space services, NASA would have been forced to disappear from the space station just as the $100 billion complex is finally finished and ready for full-time science.

NASA has only 10 remaining flights before the shuttles are permanently retired, though some legislators have called for additional flights to narrow the period of time when the U.S. will be without its own access to space. Among these legislators one can find

Republican presidential hopeful John McCain. Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, wrote in a letter to Democratic leaders in Congress this week urging them to take some action: “Unless we act immediately,” he wrote, “the U.S. will abandon its role in supporting, and benefiting from, missions to this amazing facility.”