CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) – Food is running so low aboard the international space station that the two crewmen have been instructed to cut back on calories, at least until a Russian supply ship arrives in a little over two weeks, NASA said Thursday.

If anything goes wrong with the Christmas Day delivery, the space agency will have no choice, given the grounding of its shuttle fleet, but to abandon the station and bring the men home in early January.

This cargo ship “is very critical, there’s no question about that,” said NASA’s space station program manager, Bill Gerstenmaier. Supply runs to the space station have been conducted exclusively by the Russians ever since last year’s Columbia disaster.

Gerstenmaier estimated there is enough food to last seven to 14 days beyond Christmas Day, after which there will be nothing left if the supply ship does not arrive.

The food supply has never gotten this low before, and no mandatory dieting has ever been in effect before in the four years that the station has been permanently occupied.

American astronaut Leroy Chiao and Russian cosmonaut Salizhan Sharipov are barely two months into their six-month stay aboard the space station. Last week, after a pantry audit found supplies running surprisingly low, they were put on restricted diets in hopes of trimming 5 percent to 10 percent of their daily intake of 3,000 calories.

So far, there have been no complaints from the husky, healthy men, said Dr. Sean Roden, their NASA flight surgeon. Just last month, Chiao told The Associated Press said he and Sharipov were eating a lot to keep up their weight and stay strong, and had warned Mission Control about it.

Roden said cutting out 300 or so calories a day is “really quite minimum,” and has not affected the crew’s rigorous daily exercise.

“These are consummate professionals and they will do whatever is required and asked of them,” Roden said.

He added: “They’re in good spirits, they’re doing well. I am in no way, shape or form worried about their mental mood with this menu change.”

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