Mar 9, 2010, 8:42 GMT
Paris - The end of the US space shuttle programme and President Barack Obama's decision to end development of the next- generation spacecraft has forced the European Space Agency (ESA) to revise its goals regarding the International Space Station (ISS), ESA director-general Jean-Jacques Dordain said.
Space shuttle Endeavour lands at the Kennedy Space Center, Shuttle Landing Facility, Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, 21 February 2010. EPA/GARY I ROTHSTEIN
'We have different ambitions as a consequence of decisions taken in the United States,' Dordain told the German Press Agency dpa in a telephone interview.
He insisted, however, that the US decision will ultimately be positive for the program.
'The long-term consequences of those decision will be to enhance the capability of the International Space Station (ISS) and to decrease its exploitation costs,' he said.
On February 1, the Obama administration said it planned to cancel efforts to replace the space shuttle, which leaves the Russian Soyuz capsule as the only means of transporting astronauts to and from the ISS until commercial providers can step in. The US had planned to create a next generation spacecraft to replace the shuttle and enable a return to the moon, but that programme was underfunded and behind schedule, prompting Obama to look for another solution.
Dordain said one of the important changes wrought by the decision is that it will delay human space exploration and focus more on robotics.
'This is good news for ESA, which excels at robotic exploration,' he said.
However, the bad news is that the manned mission to the moon planned for the year 2020 'is gone,' Dordain said.
The other positive consequence of the decision is a US commitment to use the ISS beyond its original shutdown date of 2016, until at least 2020, which will increase its usefulness.
'It will become a test bench for new systems and new technologies, such as life-support and transportation systems,' he noted.
Another consequence of the American decision is that ESA will now be entirely dependent on the Russian Soyuz capsule.
'We will need four Soyuz flights a year, instead of the current two, and the Russians have already agreed to that,' Dordain said.
However, this dependency creates new problems, one of them being the inability to transport material from the ISS back to Earth.
'The Soyuz capsule can only carry astronauts, and to transport cargo they would have to fill their pockets,' Dordain quipped. But he added, more seriously: 'This is certainly a problem.'
The ESA has so-called upload capabilities, with its ATV unmanned resupply spacecraft; the Russian Progress and the Japanese HTV can also be used to bring cargo to the ISS. However, none of them can bring cargo back from the station.
This would prevent, for example, the transfer to the ground of aging or defective instruments to be repaired or replaced by state- of-the-art technology.
One alternative would be to modify the ATV to give it download capability, but that would take several years, Dordain said.
Another problem could be total reliance on the Russians to transport astronauts to the ISS and back.
'Russia will be the only one to launch and recover crew. This puts them in a monopoly situation, and monopolies always give leverage. We will have to see if they ask us to increase payment.'
If the Russians do ask for more money to transport crews between the Earth and the ISS, it would put unwelcome financial pressure on the ESA, which is already squeezed by the global financial crisis.
Of ESA's 18 member states, four - Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland - are plagued by severe debt problems, and several other governments, such as Britain and France, are also intent on reducing state expenditures.
All ESA member states contribute to its programs on a scale based on their GDP. The agency's budget for 2010 is 3.745 billion euros (currently about 5.1 billion dollars).
Dordain said that 'no program has been deleted at the request of a member, yet I am asked to implement budget constraints.'
And although he insisted the American decision will 'definitely not' require other space agencies to spend more, it is forcing ESA and the others to tighten their belts.
'The question now is, how can we collectively decrease the total costs of the ISS program?' he said.
Dordain said two areas were ripe for cost-cutting - space station operations and cargo traffic between the ground and the ISS.
Regarding operations, 'we can reduce the number of people working on the ground by pooling all our resources, and therefore decreasing individual efforts,' he said.
Cargo costs could be reduced by recycling aboard the ISS. 'If we recycle, for example, water on the station, we would decrease the amount of water that would need to be transported,' he said.
Dordain said he will meet with the other space agency heads this summer in Japan to define the future of the ISS programme.
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