International Space Station Gets Life Extension Through 2024

[Buster's Uncle]

International Space Station Gets Life Extension Through 2024
SPACE.com
by Tariq Malik, Managing Editor  January 8, 2014 2:40 PM



Sunlight glints off the International Space Station with the blue limb of Earth providing a dramatic backdrop



NASA and White House officials are announcing plans today (Jan. to keep the International Space Station running through at least 2024 — a four-year life extension for the largest spacecraft ever built.

The NASA decision will allow scientists to use the International Space Station for at least the next 10 years, maximizing the science return on the $100 billion orbiting laboratory, Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's chief of exploration and human spaceflight operations, said in a teleconference. Previous lifetime projections for the space station called for it be shut down in 2020.

"There's some pretty significant benefits in announcing us to go beyond 2020," Gerstenmaier said, adding that the agency will maintain its annual $3 billion space station budget through the extension. NASA chief Charles Bolden and White House science advisor John Holdren are expected to release a statement on the extension later today.

Gerstenmaier said the decision came after a detailed review of the space station's systems and their potential to outlast the 2020 lifetime target. In the past, NASA and its partners have floated the idea of flying the space station through 2028, an option that could be revisited later, agency officials said.

The International Space Station is the product of 15 different countries and space agencies representing the United States, Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan. Construction began in 1998.

After 15 years in space, the space station has hit its stride as a national laboratory for a wide range of space science and research, Gerstenmaier said. Because it take years for scientists to plan, and then launch, experiments to the station, the extension through 2024 offers more opportunities for innovative experiments, he added.

The decision may also impact the development of private manned spacecraft by U.S. companies vying for NASA contracts to ferry American astronauts to and from the space station. Currently, NASA buys seats on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to fly Americans in space, but the agency hopes to begin purchasing flights from U.S. spaceflight companies by 2017. Several companies, such as SpaceX, Boeing, Sierra Nevada and Blue Origin, are developing vehicles to vie for NASA space-taxi contracts.

"Now they can see a market that extends throughout at least 2024," Gerstenmaier said. "So that really changes their perspective going forward."

NASA's current contract for seats on Russian Soyuz spacecraft runs through 2016, so the space agency will also have to look at potentially purchasing more seats on Soyuz capsules, too, he added.

NASA will also need more cargo flights to the space station during the extension. The space agency has billion-dollar contracts with SpaceX and the Orbital Sciences Corp. to fly a total of 20 missions through 2016. SpaceX has launched two of its 12 planned flights, while Orbital Sciences is hoping to launch its first cargo mission this month. A massive solar flare Tuesday (Jan. 7) forced Orbital to postpone the planned launch of its first cargo mission for NASA today.

Russia, Japan and the European Space Agency also provide robotic cargo resupply missions to the station.


http://news.yahoo.com/international-space-station-gets-life-extension-2024-194022615.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Obama agrees to 4-year extension for International Space Station
Reuters
By Irene Klotz  23 hours ago



Backdropped by Earth, the International Space Station is seen in this image photographed by an STS-130 crew member



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration wants to keep the International Space Station, a $100 billion orbital research outpost that is a project of 15 nations, flying until at least 2024, four years beyond a previous target, NASA said on Wednesday.

The extension will give the U.S. space agency more time to develop the technologies needed for eventual human missions to Mars, the long-term goal of NASA's human space program.

Keeping the station in orbit beyond 2020 also opens a window for commercial companies and researchers to benefit from hefty U.S. investment in the outpost.

NASA's costs for operating the station, which flies about 250 miles above Earth, run about $3 billion a year. About half that sum is spent on transporting crew and cargo.

"Ten years from today is a pretty far-reaching, pretty strategic-looking vision," NASA Associate Administrator Bill Gerstenmaier told reporters on a conference call.

"This extension… opens up a large avenue of research onboard station. It also changes the perspective for the commercial (transportation) providers. Now they can see a market that extends to at least 2024," he said.

In addition to commercial U.S. cargo ships and planned passenger space taxis, companies and research organizations are beginning to make use of the station's unique microgravity environment to develop a range of new products and technologies, including medications and off-the-shelf, shoebox-sized satellites.

Construction of the orbital outpost began in 1998. The prime partners in the venture, with the United States, include Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada. It has been permanently staffed by rotating crews of astronauts and cosmonauts since 2000.

Extending the station "is not a U.S.-only decision," Gerstenmaier said. "We talk to our partners about this. They want to go forward with this. It's just working through the government approval," he said.

"We're prepared to do what we have to do if the partners choose to take a different path," Gerstenmaier added.

A technical review by prime station contractor Boeing shows the station's laboratories, structural frame and other hardware are safe to fly until 2028, program manager John Shannon said earlier on Wednesday at the opening of an international space exploration and policy summit.

"If the physical hardware continues to operate the way we believe it does ... that leaves the door open in the future to extend," Gerstenmaier said.

At the end of its life, the station will be steered down into the atmosphere, where it will incinerate. Re-entry will take place over an ocean so any surviving debris will not threaten populated areas.

The first of up to six U.S. supply runs to the station this year was slated for launch on Wednesday, but the flight was canceled due to extremely high levels of radiation caused by a huge solar flare.

Orbital Sciences Corp, one of two firms hired by NASA to ferry cargo to the station following the retirement of the space shuttles in 2011, may try to launch its Antares rocket and Cygnus cargo ship on Thursday. The rocket flies from a commercial spaceport on Wallops Island, Virginia.

"We are concerned about mission failure," Orbital Science's Chief Technical Officer Antonio Elias told reporters. Radiation from the solar flare could potentially interfere with the rocket's avionics and other critical systems.

Privately owned Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, which also holds a NASA contract to fly cargo to the station, is preparing for its third supply run on February 22.


http://news.yahoo.com/obama-agrees-4-extension-international-space-station-205234965--sector.html