Recently in ESA Category

So the blogosphere is getting all worked up about an article run by Space News and authored by two former senior European Space Agency launcher officials that attacks sub-orbital tourism and hopes for commercial orbital transport

Hyperbola stresses the word former as it is clear that ESA's leadership does not share these views. The organisation has a policy on space tourism that could see ESA provide training, the agency has managed European Union studies about sub-orbital transport and the agency has even gone as far as helping prospective companies with their business plans and declaring that sub-orbit travel has a low (relatively speaking) carbon footprint. Former European astronauts like space tourism too

Whatever the next US human rated spacecraft is it is likely it will be able to use the International Berthing and Docking Mechanism (IBDM) that has been under development by NASA and the European Space Agency for more than two years now. The US Congress even directed NASA to develop such a mechanism with all space faring nations


credit: Geert Smet / caption: earlier US work has informed the European studies

Belgian company Verhaert Space is ESA's prime for the European work on this IBDM and at the CEAS 2009 European air and space conference in Manchester, Geert Smet University of Leuven graduate student spoke of his work that contributed to the ESA studies

His presentation revealed that the IBDM's origins is in the cancelled X-38 programme and that now the specification for the mechanism means it can dock or berth together vehicles as "small" as 5,000kg or as large as 80,000kg but the nominal spacecraft mass will be 21,500kg - enough for ESA's Automated Transfer Vehicle or the Orion crew exploration vehicle

The planned Chinese space station is to be 60,000kg in mass. Or is it that 80,000kg would nicely suit the modules for a nuclear powered Mars ship?

Watch this video from the International Astronautical Congress in Daejeon, Korea where the future of the International Space Station was discussed by the ISS partners 

Go here for more IAC2009 videos

Watch this video from the Internatonal Astronautical Congress in Daejeon, Korea first plenary session where heads of the world's major space agencies discuss the future

Go here for more IAC2009 videos

credit NASA

Can the heads of programme and heads of agency meetings shown above and described as TBC for their December and June 2010 dates really come about or will president Barack Obama end it all?

This diagram is from the joint NASA, ESA presentation for the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) 2009 in Daejeon, Korea about the outcomes of the International Space Exploration Coordination Group (ISECG) workshops. The ISECG was formed as a forum for the world's space agencies to plan out a common lunar exploration future

But will the recommendations the new NASA administrator Charles Bolden will give to his president before the end of the year permanently postpone a truly international lunar exploration plan? This week's IAC might deliver the answers

credit: IAF/KARI

So Hyperbola has finally touched down in Daejeon in south Korea, after a scorching reentry from the Oort cloud, or was that just the effect of the Korean spicy Kimchi pickle and the even more spicy red pepper paste, Kochu Chang, they put on most of their food?

Either way it is a countdown now to the start of the 60th International Astronautical Congress and the space agencies' plenary session, so expect pictures and pithy comment from this blog as the week unfolds with everything from grand human exploration visions to suborbital tourism

But it won't end with Hyperbola's Asiana flight out of Seoul next weekend, oh no, the international space theme continues with the AIAA/DLR International hypersonics and spaceplanes conference in Bremen, Germany next week

Hyperbola is launching to the Oort cloud for a week's R&R from today and will be returning via Daejeon, Korea from the 12 October. In Daejeon Hyperbola will be blogging from the International Astronautical Congress, where the world's space community meets. And yes there may even be Virgin Galactic news there...

·      Below is NASA's answer to Hyperbola's question about multiple efforts for docking systems that seemed to be springing up everywhere

As well as progress with the Orion crew exploration vehicle's LIDS NASA has informed Hyperbola that $15 million is to be spent on docking system work for the agency's commercial crew and cargo programme and last week the European Space Agency explained to this blog that it too was co-operating with NASA on a docking system that is called the Common Berthing and Docking Mechanism 


"[Low Impact Docking System] is the baselined docking mechanism for Constellation/Orion.

·         ISS has assumed responsibility for building a new docking adapter for the US [International Space Station segment]

o   Replaces the existing Pressurized Mating Adapter (PMA) based [Androgynous Peripheral Assembly System (APAS)] docking system used for Shuttle

o   ATLAS (remember that ATLAS stands for APAS to LIDS Adapter System) has been transferred from Orion to ISS and integrated into new project called Common Docking Adapter (CDA)

o   CDA Project has been asked to develop a new International Docking Standard, which would identify key technical requirements that would allow many different designs for docking spacecraft. If an agreement can be reached and the agency implements the standard on ISS, LIDS may be slightly modified to interface with the standard [emphasis added].

·         $15M in [American Recovery and Reinvestment Act 2009] funding is being used to develop requirements for a new docking adapter and building components for a demonstration International Docking Standard

 ·         The docking standard is being worked by an international group including [Canadian Space Agency], ESA, [Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency], NASA, and [Rocket and Space Corporation] Energia; the intent is to provide a standard for use by any nation or commercial company to provide the ability to dock spacecraft."

The European Space Agency has just this minute released this information with an invite to media to attend the Thales Alenia Space Italy contract signing event - it is on Monday


Set for launch in 2010, the data collected by the European Experimental Reentry Testbed (EXPERT) will provide aero-thermodynamic tool validation on the basis of actual flight data for a number of physical phenomena encountered by space transportation vehicles during their re-entry phase in the Earth atmosphere. It will also improve the European competence in the atmospheric re-entry field and associated technologies.

Developing improved space transportation systems requires an increased confidence in the knowledge of such phenomena and a reduction of the design margins to increase system performance. The availability of detailed experimental data will allow the refinement of the aerodynamic and aero-thermodynamic models and project tools.

EXPERT is conceived to provide these data through a low cost in-flight experimentation.

The EXPERT vehicle consists of:

- a cold structure that hosts the avionic equipment and payload electronics,

- a thermal protection system, which is also a hot structure,

- power and data handling subsystems,

- a parachute system to ensure a soft landing of the vehicle,

- an inertial measurement unit.

The payload will entail a series of scientific flight measurement equipment, including classic and advanced techniques such as temperature, heat flux and pressure sensors, spectrometers and an infrared camera.

On 22 July the UK government science and innovation, and space, minister Lord Paul Drayson and guests* will give details about the new European Space Agency facilty in the UK and Hyperbola has heard that the British National Space Centre (BNSC) is to become the UK Space Agency but there is no new money despite this BNSC statement

So this space agency will be one only in name and instead of new money for UK civil space activities there is to be a reallocation of monies with the main beneficiary being the European Space Agency's new Oxfordshire based-facility. What does that mean for the MoonLITE mission?