Recently in International Space Station Category

Vega, the European Space Agency's new light launcher, has now got its maiden flight date set, for 26 January 2012. ESA had been hoping to launch during 2011, but the critical parameter was to get Vega launched between the 20 October launch of Soyuz and the beginning of preparations at Kourou, French Guiana for the next Automated Transfer Vehicle launch, via Ariane 5, to the International Space Station.

European made components have arrived by sea at Kourou from Avio's factory in Colleferro, near Rome. The inaugural campaign will begin on November 7 with rollout of Vega's P80 first stage to the launch pad, followed during the subsequent weeks by stacking of the Zefiro 23 second stage and Zefiro 9 third stage - all of which are loaded with solid-propellant. A progress review will be held on December 7 to authorize a continuation of the final integration process - allowing the bi-propellant Attitude and Vernier Upper Module (AVUM) to be mated atop the launcher, and final operations to begin with the mission's multi-spacecraft payload.

carrying LARES (LAser RElativity Satellite) and nine cubesat educational payloads of varying sizes.

Vega will lift off from the Spaceport's ZLV launch site, which originally was used for the Ariane 1 and Ariane 3 vehicles.

The medium-lift Soyuz and light category Vega will complement ESA's heavylift Ariane 5s to provide a fully flexible range of launch options at Kourou. Vega, whose first stage is one of the world's biggest carbon fibre single-piece structures, is designed to launch satellites up to 1.5 tonnes into 700km polar orbits. As French Guiana is much closer to the equator than Soyuz's normal launch site at Baikonur, added boost from the Earth's spin will nearly double its maximum payload to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) to 3 tonnes. Ariane 5 can lift 10 tonnes to GTO, though ESA member governments are thought to be moving towards approval of a mid-life upgrade to increase payload capacity.

A longer-term project is also underway, to develop a a high-thrust cryogenic engine that could form the basis of ESA's next-generation launcher. It will not fly until about 2025, but is intended to provide a medium-lift capability in a modular design, with a re-ignitable upper stage and options for strap-on solid propellant boosters offering extra thrust.

NASA administrator Charles Bolden had an op-ed in today's {well the website says 27 April) yesterday's Houston Chronicle that is notably short and strangely refers to a 2015 International Space Station retirement date in the present tense

While I can understand why he was making the point of the Constellation programme's Ares I crew launch vehicle and its Orion crew exploration vehicle only starting to operate after ISS was to be retired in 2015 surely president Barack Obama has now OK'd station use to 2020? Bolden doesn't mention that his plan's commercial crew programme is not expected to deliver an operational crew transport system until 2016 at the earliest

But Bolden has greater problems than the use of tense in an op-ed, as the Congressional investigation into actions by NASA on Constellation contracts steps up a gear; has the agency broken the law?

I wonder how Congress will also feel about co-operation with the Chinese? According to the Agence France Presse, via the Times Colonist (?) website, Bolden said Tuesday that he would be happy to co-operate with China - the rumours are a US astronaut would fly on a Shenzhou mission

And just to add to Bolden's Congressional woes, on the same day as his Houston Chornicle op-ed, 27 April, another Congressman gave their penny's worth on the Obama plan

Following a meeting between the Space Shuttle and International Space Station programmes and the space operations mission directorate's senior management NASA has concluded that

• STS-133/Discovery now becomes the Launch-On-Need (LON) vehicle for the STS-132/ULF-4 mission targeted for 14 May launch
• STS-133/ULF-5 is to fly 16 September
• STS-134/ULF6/AlphaMagneticSpectrometer is targeted for mid-November
• AMS should be at Kennedy Space Center in late August - so STS-134 date is still fluid
• While November is the new "no earlier than" launch date for STS-134/Endeavour, due to ISS traffic with Soyuz, ATV and HTV a flight timeframe of "end of CY2010 and early into CY2011" is said to be "challenging"

credit: spacepolicyonline.com / caption: the schedule slide that will come to haunt Obama's flexible path

In a president George W. Bush-like moment NASA administrator Charles Bolden is reported to have said: "it is the uneasiest thing we could do". Uneasiest? Don't you mean it is one of the hardest things you could do?

And Bolden might not want to admit it but his allegedly executable non-Constellation programme is ultimately, in capabilities terms, just as challenging and probably unexecutable as Bush's Constellation in technology and funding 

Why? We now know that president Barack Obama's plan for NASA is to work towards a 2025 asteroid rendezvous and a mid-2030s Mars mission that would not land. Constellation had Mars as an aspiration but its goal was to begin Moon missions from 2018 with a landing soon after and the slow build up of a permanent lunar base from the early 2020s

Surely they are very different? Look again

One has to wonder what on Earth (pun intended) president Barack Obama, his administration and the NASA management team think will be accomplished with a 1h 55min chin wag between "senior officials, space leaders, academic experts, industry leaders and others" about the future of US space exploration

Public relations disaster is one accomplishment that this blogger can envisage. If everyone comes out of the conference (see timing below - all times in Eastern Daylight Time) declaring the Obama plan a fantastic vision the event will be criticised as a White House whitewash and if a single individual speaks out against it, the reports will be of a divided conference

Hyperbola suspects the outcome will be far far worse

We are told Obama will have some "private time" with politicians attending the event. Anything other than the president's ageement to a wish list of space transportation projects is going to see those politicians attack the new space plan. And it won't stop there, academics will likely go on the record to say they don't agree with all or parts of the plan while industry will simply brief journalists, off the record, about why the plan doesn't make sense 

It is not obvious at what point the media get to question the president and, or his conference participants but I would imagine that certain politicians and corporations are already on the phone to Florida based and national media. Is it a conference or is it Obama's last space stand?

The afternoon to save exploration in full

13:30h NASA tv begins President Barack Obama KSC visit coverage
14:25h President Obama speech in Operations & Checkout building
15:45h Conference overview
           with NASA admininstrator Charles Bolden, Norman Augustine, John Holdren
16:25h Conference breakout sessions
           - increasing access to and utilization of the International Space Station
           - jumpstarting the new technologies to take us beyond
           - expanding our reach into the Solar System
           - harnessing space to expand economic opportunity
17:40h Conference wrap-up with Bolden and breakout session moderators

The 15:45h conference overview and 16:25h breakout sessions will all take place in the Operations & Checkout building

Reading about president Barack Obama's decision to resurrect the Orion crew exploration vehicle as an escape capsule we are told (here and then here and in plenty of other articles) that this will reduce NASA's dependence upon Russian crew transport services

This could not be more wrong. Russia has been providing all International Space Station (ISS) crew rotation flghts since STS-129, the last Shuttle flight to do that job in November last year

The ISS has six crew (yes Expedition 22 had only five crew) and for that Russia is providing four three-crew Energia Soyuz TMA spacecraft a year

Orion Lite will not launch crew, it launches unmanned for an automatic rendezvous and docking with the International Space Station and then sits there, but until when?

It is not needed for an emergency return. Soyuz have been docked to the station for the emergency return role ever since station has been inhabited. So Orion Lite is not reducing Russian flights to the station and it is simply not needed for the escape role

credit: NASA / caption: NASA's proposed Ares V cargo launch vehicle mode in a windtunnel 

A heavy lift rocket is needed to sustain the International Space Station (ISS) because when Shuttle retires key parts of the station are too large for any of the existing rockets available or those planned

In an exclusive interview Boeing vice president and ISS programme manager Joy Bryant stressed the need for a heavy lift capability and downmass - to bring back experiments - to ensure the station is full realised as a laboratory

Boeing has been NASA's prime contractor for the US segment of the ISS since 1993. On 5 March this year the company officially "delivered" the outpost to NASA but Boeing will continue to service the station on a "sustaining" contract. In Bryant's view to sustain the ISS a heavy lift launcher is needed

Watch former NASA astronaut and now Boeing space exploration general manager and vice president Brewster Shaw talk Ares I crew launch vehicle upper stages and Ares V cargo launch vehicle design contracts in this video from the National Space Symposium in 2009. He also talks about the "8-10,000" direct job losses expected if Shuttle retires without substantial progress on Ares V. He is referring to the Chinese at the beginning of the video because if I remember correctly (I was at this briefing) he had just come from a meeting with China's space programme officials. This video is part two, for part one go through to the extended portion of the blog post

Boeing tells Hyperbola that its own video from the 2010 Boeing National Space Symposium exploration briefing will be posted here so check back soon