ISS Stockholders Meet to Ensure Lifespan of Space Station
Eleven major stockholders of the International Space Station consist of the United States, Russia, the European Space Agency, Japan, and Canada, meeting to discuss ways to ensure the almost completed ISS is not forced into early retirement by the 15-year design life of early station hardware forces and the U.S. Vision for Space Exploration. The big topic at the meeting was the engineering and financial measures for future station operations, required to keep it operating until 2020 and beyond.
With the United States ending their space shuttle operations around 2010, and with increased budget issues with lunar and Mars exploration, the investors are concerned that the United States will withdraw from the International Space Station, leaving the remaining investors with the full operational costs of the entire station. The meeting on July 10-11 is known as the Multilateral Coordination Board, attended by expert agency officials and heads of the investors who have first-hand knowledge of the station hash out issues. Station partners spoke as part of a symposium that was organized by the International Astronautical Federation which has celebrated ten years of station operations. On July 17th, another meeting of the heads of participating agencies are scheduled to meet at ESA headquarters to discuss several things for the future of the ISS:
• Discuss station operations
• Discuss the transition to full-time crews of six astronauts from three
• Discuss the longevity of the facility
• Identification of critical space infrastructure interfaces—spacecraft, lunar rovers, and lunar habitats
• Increasing opportunities for international cooperation
• Reaffirm the importance of maintaining an open dialogue as plans of individual agencies progresses
Part of the design life of the FGBN Zarya module is fifteen years from its beginning date—the first element of the ISS station—according to Alexey B. Krasnov, head of Russia’s piloted program at Roskosmos space agency. And the ISS is considered a test-bed for future space exploration, so the wearing down of parts is definitely not on the agenda which is why the major heads are meeting to review ISS cooperation. They agree on the fact that the ISS has significantly expanded their capabilities, recognizing that since their last meeting in January of 2007—Dextre, Canada’s 2-armed special purpose dexterous manipulator; the ESA Columbus Module and the Japanese Experiment Module Kibo.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 at 11:22 am and is filed under Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
