Manned spaceship design unveiled
BBC News
“It is designed to replace the Soyuz vehicle currently in use by Russia and will allow Europe to participate directly in crew transportation. The reusable ship was conceived to carry four people towards the Moon, rivalling the US Ares/Orion system….
“‘If ESA and the Russian Space Agency reach agreement, Europe will supply the service module of that co-operative spacecraft,’ [Anatoly] Zak told BBC News.
“This service module will use technology - such as the propulsion systems - developed for Europe’s Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), an unmanned freighter recently sent to re-supply the International Space Station (ISS).”
ESA aims for manned capsule by 2020
Flight International
“A €300 million ($475 million) three-year Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) Advanced Return Vehicle (ARV) development project, to be proposed to the European Space Agency’s November ministerial meeting, could become a stepping stone to a human transport system in 2020.
“ESA wants to evolve its expendable 20,000kg (44,000lb) ATV, which docked with the International Space Station for the first time in April, into an EADS Astrium Ariane 5-launched ARV. That cargo vehicle would be the basis for the manned system operating around 2020. ESA will design ARV with a view to man-rating it in future. The cargo version will be about 5,000kg lighter than the Ariane 5’s low-Earth orbit capability to allow for the future addition of a launch abort tower.”
Credit: ESA
ESA News Release
The first robotic mission to return samples to Earth from Mars took a further step toward realisation with the recent publication of a mission design report by the iMARS Working Group. The report, defines key elements of the future internationally-funded mission involving the cooperation of ESA, NASA and other national agencies.
iMARS, which stands for the International Mars Architecture for the Return of Samples is a committee of the International Mars Exploration Working Group made up of scientists, engineers, strategic planners, and managers. The report, which comes after months of deliberation, outlines the scientific and engineering requirements of such an international mission to be undertaken in the timeframe 2020-2022.
The Mars Sample Return mission is an essential step with respect to future exploration goals and the prospect of establishing a future human mission to Mars. Returned samples will increase the knowledge of the properties of Martian soil and contribute significantly to answering questions about the possibility of life on the Red Planet. This mission will improve our understanding of the Mars environment to support planning for the future human exploration.
Guy Bujold, Canadian Space Agency president; Jean-Jacques Dordain, European Space Agency director-general; NASA Administrator Michael Griffin; Anatolii N. Perminov, Russian Federal Space Agency head; and Keiji Tachikawa, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency president. Credit: ESA/S. Corvaja
The Heads of the Five Families Space Agencies met in Paris this week to discuss ending the Mob war, dividing up the narcotics trade, and bringing Michael Corleone back from Sicily the future of the International Space Station.
Among other things, the meeting produced this statement supporting their own efforts on - of all things - the International Space Station, which they have spent the last 20 years building.
Heads of Agency International Space Station Joint Statement
PARIS — The heads of the International Space Station (ISS) agencies from Canada, Europe, Japan, Russia and the United States met at European Space Agency (ESA) Headquarters in Paris on July 17, 2008, to review ISS cooperation. As part of their discussions, they noted the significantly expanded capability that the ISS now provides for on-orbit research and technology development activities and as an engineering test bed for flight systems and operations that are critical to future space exploration initiatives. These activities improve the quality of life on Earth by expanding the frontiers of human knowledge.
Continue reading ‘Heads of the Five Space Agencies Meet; Is Bloody ISS Turf War Finally Over?’
ESA PRESS RELEASE
3 July 2008
Spacecraft controllers have just awoken Rosetta from hibernation to prepare for its encounter with asteroid (2867) Steins on 5 September. ESA’s comet chaser will study the relatively rare asteroid as it flies by on its way to comet 67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
Launched in March 2004, Rosetta will reach its final destination only in 2014, after travelling a total of about 6500 million km. The distance between the spacecraft and the Sun as it approaches the comet will be about 600 million or 4 AU (1 AU or 1 Astronomical Unit is equal to 150 million km, the mean distance between Earth and the Sun).
Rosetta has swung by Earth twice and Mars once, performing gravity-assist manoeuvres, that gave it the necessary boost to continue on its journey. The third and last Earth swing-by is scheduled for November 2009. The spacecraft will also fly by two asteroids and study them on the way: (2867) Steins in September this year and (21) Lutetia in June 2010. As it closes in on (2867) Steins in September, Rosetta will have travelled about 3700 million km and will be 2.1 AU from the Sun.
After its last planetary swing-by on 13 November last year, Rosetta headed towards the asteroid belt located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. On 27 March 2008, the spacecraft switched to its near-Sun hibernation mode for a period of three months. During this phase, a few subsystems were put into a dormant state to optimise their lifetime (as this is only the beginning of the mission’s science phase).
Continue reading ‘Rosetta Awakes from Hibernation for Asteroid Encounter’
ESA PRESS RELEASE
2 July 2008
As interest in exploration of the Moon soars among the world’s space agencies, ESA, through its General Studies Programme, has challenged university students to develop a robotic vehicle that is capable of working in difficult terrain, comparable to that found at the lunar poles. Eight university teams have been selected to proceed to the design stage of ESA’s Lunar Robotics Challenge.
ESA’s first Lunar Robotics Challenge got under way in late March with the issuing of an Announcement of Opportunity that invited teams of university students to create an innovative, mobile robot capable of retrieving samples from a lunar-like crater.
Eight of the submitted proposals have been selected for funding after evaluation by a team of ESA experts. The selected student teams received the go-ahead to design their robotic systems, and eventually build them to compete in the challenge event.
Continue reading ‘Eight teams taking up ESA’s Lunar Robotics Challenge’
ESA PRESS RELEASE
2 July 2008
ESA and the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) will be co-hosting, in cooperation with NASA and the International Mars Exploration Working Group (IMEWG), an International Conference on 9 and 10 July in the Auditorium of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris* to discuss the next step in the exploration of Mars.
We are still collecting data under NASA’s Phoenix, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Exploration Rover and Mars Odyssey missions, as well as under ESA’s Mars Express mission, as we prepare for even more exciting missions to come, notably NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory and ESA’s ExoMars. Mars exploration is continuing at a steady pace and future missions will integrate scientific payloads and technologies that will eventually serve the ultimate goal of carrying out a manned mission to Mars.
The international community has for a long time agreed that the next imperative step, one which will exponentially increase our knowledge and understanding of the Red Planet and its environment, is a Sample Return Mission.
International cooperation is increasingly being regarded as an enabling element of space exploration, especially when it comes to challenging endeavours. These two factors – the compelling next step in the exploration of Mars and international cooperation – prompted the IMEWG to decide to set up an ad hoc international committee to study an international architecture for a Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission concept.
Continue reading ‘Paris Confab to Explore International Mars Sample Return Mission’
Despite approval ratings that are rapidly sinking into George W. Bush territory, French leader Nicolas Sarkozy has shown no sign of letting his own people’s lack of confidence in his leadership stop him from pursuing lofty visions.
Just in the last week alone, the French president flew to Tokyo for the G-8 summit, pissed off striking French labor unions, embarked on a campaign to save the European Union, demanded that Poland approve the EU’s Lisbon Treaty, vowed to find a way “to contain the problem to the Irish” over the Lisbon Treaty, attacked the European Central Bank for raising interest rates, got into a public row with EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson over free trade, unveiled sweeping plans to control EU immigration, promoted his new plan for easing the global food crisis, demanded the G-8 to invite China and India to future meetings, decided he would attend the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing after all, announced the construction of a new nuclear reactor, greeted freed Columbian-French hostage Ingrid Betancourt at a French airbase, vowed to press Syria for the release of an Israeli soldier, and prepared for the release of his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy’s new folk album.
It’s all in a week’s work for the energetic Sarkozy, who assumed the EU’s rotating six-month presidency on July 1. In addition to the above list, the French president is also trying to overhaul the European space program, according to a BBC report.
“President Nicolas Sarkozy’s well-known admiration for all things American now extends to space exploration. Speaking to the BBC, a senior official involved in French space policy said that it was time to shake up the European Space Agency and make it more like the US space agency (NASA) by giving it a new, politically-led direction.”
Continue reading ‘Sarkozy Reaches for the Heavens Even as His Star Plummets to Earth’
NASA MISSION UPDATE
PASADENA, Calif.—NASA’s Cassini mission is closing one chapter of its journey at Saturn and embarking on a new one with a two-year mission that will address new questions and bring it closer to two of its most intriguing targets—Titan and Enceladus.
On June 30, Cassini completes its four-year prime mission and begins its extended mission, which was approved in April of this year.
Among other things, Cassini revealed the Earth-like world of Saturn’s moon Titan and showed the potential habitability of another moon, Enceladus. These two worlds are primary targets in the two-year extended mission, dubbed the Cassini Equinox Mission. This time period also will allow for monitoring seasonal effects on Titan and Saturn, exploring new places within Saturn’s magnetosphere, and observing the unique ring geometry of the Saturn equinox in August of 2009 when sunlight will pass directly through the plane of the rings.
“We’ve had a wonderful mission and a very eventful one in terms of the scientific discoveries we’ve made, and yet an uneventful one when it comes to the spacecraft behaving so well,” said Bob Mitchell, Cassini program manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “We are incredibly proud to have completed all of the objectives we set out to accomplish when we launched. We answered old questions and raised quite a few new ones and so our journey continues.”
Continue reading ‘Cassini Begins Teen Years With Brand New Mission, Bitchin’ Attitude’
NASA MISSION UPDATE
After more than 17 years of pioneering solar science, a joint NASA and European Space Agency mission to study the sun will end on or about July 1.
The Ulysses spacecraft has endured for almost four times its expected lifespan. However, the spacecraft will cease operations because of a decline in power produced by its onboard generators. Ulysses forever has changed the way scientists view the sun and its effect on the surrounding space. Mission results and the science legacy it leaves behind were reviewed today at ESA Headquarters in Paris.
“The main objective of Ulysses was to study, from every angle, the heliosphere, which is the vast bubble in space carved out by the solar wind,” said Ed Smith, Ulysses project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “Over its long life, Ulysses redefined our knowledge of the heliosphere and went on to answer questions about our solar neighborhood we did not know to ask.”
Ulysses ends its career after revealing that the magnetic field emanating from the sun’s poles is much weaker than previously observed. This could mean the upcoming solar maximum period will be less intense than in recent history.
Continue reading ‘Ulysses Solar Spacecraft to Shutdown After Near 18 Years’
Speaking in Paris, NASA Administrator Mike Griffin urged European space officials and executives to build on the success of the Automated Transfer Vehicle to develop a human space vehicle, the Associate Press reports.
“We welcome the development of independent European capabilities in space to provide redundant systems in the event of failure of any one partner’s capabilities,” Griffin said, referring to the International Space Station.
NASA will retire the space shuttle in 2010; it could be five years before its replacement, Orion, will be ready to fly with astronauts. In the meantime, the Russian Soyuz will be the only vehicle capable of carrying humans to ISS. There is great concern in the United States about being too dependent on Russia.
Interestingly enough, any European human space program could increase dependence on the Russians. ESA and Russia are considering whether to jointly develop a new vehicle, which might fly on a new Russian booster, Flightglobal.com reports.
“The Khrunichev State Space Research and Production Centre’s in-development Angara rocket could launch the proposed Russian-European Space Agency Crew Space Transportation System (CSTS) spacecraft, according to the head of Russia’s Federal Space Agency, Anatoly Perminov.”
Europe is studying several options for human spaceflight. It also has a vehicle, Ariane 5, that could be used to launch the new vehicle. No decision is expected at least until European space ministers meet this Fall.