Astronauts may require taking the unparalleled step of temporarily abandoning the global Space Station if last week's Russian launch accident prevents new crews from flying there this fall.Until official figure out what went wrong with Russia's essential Soyuz rockets, there will be no way to launch any more astronauts before the present residents have to leave in mid-November.

The worrying predicament comes just weeks after NASA's final space shuttle flight.

"We have plenty of options," NASA's space station program manager, Mike Suffredini, assured reporters Monday. "We'll focus on crew protection as we always do."Abandoning the space station, still for a short period, would be an unpleasant last option for the world's five space agencies that have spent decades working on the project. Astronauts have been livelihood aboard the space station since 2000, and the objective is to keep it going until 2020.