NASA's Space Launch System includes a new heavy lift rocket and the Orion/Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle for missions of exploration to a range of deep space destinations. Image Credit/NASA Image
A year of milestones in human spaceflight, some tinged with nostalgia, is drawing to a close. The New Year opens with the U. S.and its global partners settled in Earth orbit, and a NASA strategy for the future human exploration of deep space starting to gel.
In the U. S., the commercial sector’s role in space is also on the rise.
Each step, though, is paced by an uncertain economy and strained budgets.
“The year truly marks the beginning of a new era in the human exploration of our solar system,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden noted in a year end space agency statement. “It’s been a landmark year…”
NASA’s 30-year shuttle program came to a close in July, with a final flight that capped the long assembly and outfitting of theU. S., European, Canadian and Japanese segments of the six-person International Space Station. Atlantis touched down on July 21, ending the last of 135 missions.
NASA readies Atlantis for final shuttle mission. Photo Credit/NASA Photo
The shuttle’s retirement was accompanied by thousands of job losses and memories of achievements — the launching and refurbishment of the Hubble Space Telescope among them — as well as the loss of the orbiters Columbia and Challenger.
The milestone also left Russia and China as the only nations capable of launching humans into orbit until U. S. commercial companies initiate transportation services, possibly in 2017.
The next to last shuttle misson equipped the space station with the $2 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, an external observatory designed by experts from 16 countries to characterize anti-matter, dark matter and other little understood particles that comprise the cosmic fabric.
Shuttle astronauts delivered the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the space station for studies of the cosmic fabric. Photo Credit/NASA photo
The retirement was set in motion in 2004, as former President Bush unveiled Constellation, his strategy to return U.S.astronauts to the moon by 2020 as a first step in the eventual exploration of Mars. The underfunded Constellation initiative was cancelled by President Obama in 2010 and replaced with a more measured strategy. The new plan replaced the moon with an asteroid as a stepping stone to a human mission to Mars, possibly in the 2030s.
In 2011, Congress and the White House began to cement the new stategy. In May, NASA re-cast Constellation’s Orion capsule, a four person spacecraft designed for a range of deep space missions, as the Orion/Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle. In September, more of the crucial pieces began to fall into place as Congress and the White House settled on a $3 billion annual commitment to fund the Space Launch System.
The SLS is a new heavy lift rocket for the Orion/MPCV. The funding commitment embraces and paces work on the SLS and Orion/MPCV as well as upgrades to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center launch complex.
NASA's Orion/Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle moves into view in this artist's concept. Image Credit/NASA image
The first orbital test flight of the Orion/MPCV’s heat shielding and other critical subcomponents could fall into place in 2014, using non SLS hardware. The first piloted flight of the Orion/MPCV is penciled in for 2021.
The New Year promises to bring the firstU. S.commercial cargo delivery missions to the International National Space station as well as a new round of competition in NASA’s efforts to foster a commercial space transportation system capable of transporting astronauts to and from the orbital outpost.
SpaceX, one of twoU. S.commercial re-supply companies under contract to NASA, is slated to launch a cargo version of its re-usable Dragon capsule in February.
Space X's Dragon is tentatively scheduled to carry out the first U. S. commercial cargo delivery to the International Space Station. Imagerg Credit/SpaceX
As 2011 drew to a close, NASA’s Commercial Crew Development program was confronted by a setback when lawmakers agreed to $406 million in 2012 spending on the initiative rather than the $850 million sought by the White House. The reduction will delay by a year, or until 2017, the first operational flight of a commercial crew to the station, NASA now estimates.
The space agency also decided to stick with more flexible Space Act Agreements rather switch to more traditional contracting for the next phase of commercial crew development.
The past year brought other strides and setbacks that will influence the future.
China launched an unpiloted orbital space lab Tiangong-1 that experts say is the prototype for a future Chinese space station. The lab’s launch was followed with a successful unpiloted orbital docking test with a Shenzhou capsule. New docking tests with human crews are anticipated in 2012.
China's Shenzhou 8 docks with the Tiangong 1 orbital space lab in an orbital demonstration. Image Credit/China.org
Russia had a particularly difficult year in space, with a range of rocket failures. The casualties included the Aug. 24 crash of a Progress supply capsule bound for the space station.
The third stage failure of the freighter’s Soyuz launcher prompted a suspension of Soyuz crew launches to the space station. Six person operations aboard the station were cut to three for much of the final months in late 2011, as Russia recovered.
The health of the Soyuz system escalated in significance with the shuttle’s retirement. There is no alternative for crew transport with the shuttle in retirement.
NASA began the recruitment of more astronauts in 2011, a new class of explorers who will help to pioneer the use of commercial orbital transportation services and the development of the Orion spacecraft.
Though it did not draw as much attention as other space developments in 2011, NASA was among a dozen global space agencies that signed off on a Global Exploration Roadmap unveiled by the International Space Exploration Coordination Group on Sept. 22.
The nonbinding roadmap outlines two international strategies for reach Mars with humans in the next 25 years, one leads first to the moon and the second an asteroid as a stepping stone.
The participants reached agreement on the document in Kyoto,Japan.
The roadmap, which was five years in the making, is due a revision in 2012.