European space agency set to play greater role in ISS project

On March 9, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched its Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), which will dock with the International Space Station (ISS) and open a new page in the troubled station’s history.

Yet Russia, the country that has probably done more than any other to keep the ISS project alive, is considering calling it a day.

Russia has sunk much material and emotional investment into the ISS. The Russian public are accustomed to their role as the world’s space pioneers, and Russia has for decades led the way in long-duration manned orbital missions, first in the space station Mir, and later in the ISS. Moreover, everyone is aware of the Herculean efforts of the Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos) to sustain the ISS and fly in relief crews after the 2003 Columbia disaster put a freeze on shuttle flights.

However, those emotional ties eventually have to give way to practical considerations, such as statistics, kilowatt/hours, communications channels, etc.

It would be an understatement to say that the Russian contribution to the ISS project is declining. Right now, the station has eight modules, including only three Russian-made elements, i.e. Zarya, Zvezda and the Pirs docking compartment. Top managers at the Rocket and Space Corporation Energia, the main Russian ISS-project contractor, say that those three modules generate only 5 kWt, instead of the required 50 kWt, and that the station’s Russian segment therefore lacks power.

Two power-generating modules are planned, but will only be launched in 2014 and 2015, respectively. Roskosmos currently has to pay $2,000 per kWt to the United States and to negotiate mutual clearing schemes. Energia CEO Vitaly Lopota said the American and Russian segments would generate 100 and 7 kWt by 2009 and 2011, respectively.

Until recently, Russia flew NASA and ESA astronauts to the ISS. But its transport monopoly would soon be broken if the ATV project succeeds. Although the ATV is still undergoing tests, it is clear that the EU wants to fly its own manned missions to the ISS.

NASA’s feelings about the European achievements appear to vary between vexation and relief. In his March 7 article “NASA Wary of Relying on Russia” Washington Post Staff Writer Marc Kaufman said: “In 2 1/2 years, just as the station gets fully assembled, the United States will no longer have any spacecraft of its own capable of carrying astronauts and cargo to the station. The three space shuttles will be retired by then, because of their high cost and questionable safety, and NASA will have nothing ready to replace them until 2015 at the earliest.”

“For five years or more, the United States will be dependent on the technology of others to reach the station. To complicate things further, the only nation now capable of flying humans to the station is Russia,” the article said.

“NASA Administrator Michael Griffin calls the situation his ‘greatest regret and greatest concern.’ … NASA’s budget calls for spending $2.6 billion for transportation to the space station between fiscal 2009 and 2013. As it stands now, much of that would go to the Russians,” the article said.

The U.S. Senate considers this to be the worst possible scenario.

It seems that NASA, which did not believe that the ATV project would succeed, is now lamenting the longtime discrimination against the ESA as an ISS partner. It should be noted in this connection that the ESA’s Columbus laboratory was delivered to Cape Canaveral in May 2006, but did not lift off aboard the shuttle Atlantis until this February.

Jean-Yves Le Gall, CEO of Arianespace, a public-private company manufacturing, operating and marketing Ariane 5 launch vehicles, said in an interview last week that the company would like to play a larger role in supplying the ISS. Le Gall said the EU is scheduled to decide in November whether to enter the field of human spaceflight and become a full-fledged participant in the ISS project.

The United States is well aware of the EU’s space ambitions and has to choose a partner for near-Earth space exploration in the short- and mid-term. Nor does the ESA conceal the fact that it is prepared for closer cooperation with NASA. “We believe we can be an important part of the solution for the space station and counterbalance to the Russians, if we are given a chance,” Le Gall said.
Source

Rocket blast kills Iraqi police

At least eight policemen in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, have been killed while defusing rockets that were primed to fire, officials say. More than two dozen other people were wounded in the explosion in a Shia district in the east of the city.

The cache of rockets was found by Iraqi security forces after an attack on nearby Iraqi and US military bases.

A bomb disposal squad was trying to defuse the rockets when they exploded, a military official said.

“Some of the rockets had been fired,” an Iraqi police officer told AFP news agency.

“As they were trying to defuse the others, there was a mishandling and they blew up.”

Militant attacks across Iraq are down 60% since 30,000 additional US troops were posted to the country last year, the US military says.

A fragile sense of security has begun to emerge as the bloodshed in Baghdad has apparently diminished.

However, twin bombings of crowded pet markets in Baghdad on 1 February killed at least 98 people - the deadliest bombings in the capital in months.