By any standard, ESA enjoyed a glorious year in 2014. If anybody remained in any doubt as to its ability to pull off the technically fantastic, the Rosetta mission put an end to it – after a 10-year, 6 billion km (4 billion mile) journey involving five trips around the Sun, three slingshot fly-bys of Earth and a fourth of Mars, the spacecraft made global headlines when, as planned, it “woke up” in January after 31 months in power-saving deep-space hibernation before continuing to close on its comet target.
Rendezvous in August – with increasingly stunning pictures of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko – followed by a pinpoint lander mission kept the awe factor bubbling; the fact that the lander did not quite cling on to its low-gravity landing pad and bounced into shade that left its solar panels dark was a partial disappointment for the scientists but left no perceptible dent in broader public delight with what head of mission operations Paolo Ferri called “a really cool mission”.
As hard acts to follow go, Rosetta is going to take some beating – and it’s still turning in great pictures and a comet-sized mountain of data, expected to shadow 67P until about year-end.
Such a feat understandably overshadowed more mundane but still dazzling accomplishments. The final Automated Transfer Vehicle mission, ATV-5, arrived at the International Space Station in August 2014, laden with supplies and demonstrating pinpoint precision in fully-automatic docking. A string of perfect Ariane 5 launches has continued a run that now stands at 64 in a row.
During 2015, Rosetta has held its place in the news; the main mission continues to perform wonders, and hopes remain that its lander, Philae, may harvest enough sunlight to coax its batteries back to life. But Europe’s real star turn of 2015 has been Samantha Cristoforetti, the Italian air force captain turned astronaut whose December 2014 to May 2015 stint aboard the International Space Station was marked by delightful use of social media – as 493,000 Twitter followers attest.
@AstroSamantha, at home on the ISS
ESA
Where ESA has really shone in recent months, though, is in its vision for the future. A bid to master hypersonic re-entry got a boost in February with the successful suborbital flight of a wingless testbed designed to validate heat shielding and control technologies that will feed into a follow-on programme to develop a reusable, autonomous runway-landing spaceplane.
The Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV) lifting body craft – about 5m (16ft) long, weighing 2t and heavily wired up with sensors – enjoyed a flawless launch from Kourou, French Guiana atop ESA’s small rocket, Vega, for a suborbital test run to a Pacific Ocean splashdown.
Vega with IXV on board
ESA
The results will feed the Programme for Reusable In-Orbit Demonstrator for Europe, which has been granted funding by ESA’s member states and could fly as early as 2018, also atop Vega. Ultimately, ESA's objective is to be able to bring material back from space, including possibly from asteroids or even Mars.
This year has also seen a milestone reached in Europe’s much-delayed plan to establish its own, civilian-controlled satellite navigation capability. A successful 27 March launch, by Soyuz rocket from Kourou, of Galileo satellites number seven and eight, marked the start of what is hoped to be a six-per-year fast track deployment run of what will eventually be a 30-unit constellation. Another dual launch by around year-end will put the European Commission, which is paying for the programme, in a position to begin offering initial commercial services.
And the launch also coincided with good news about Galileo units five and six. Launched in 2014 but left in what looked to be useless orbits by a rocket misfunction, they have in the end been coaxed into serviceable positions.
For European ambitions in spaceflight – and its exploitation of space technology – what is probably most significant is the fact that 2015 is seeing a continuation of a political and financial momentum that, it is fair to say, is ensuring that Europe in space is defined not by headline missions but by long-term vision. The closing act of 2014 was a vote of confidence from the governments of ESA’s member states, who – despite their very terrestrial financial struggles – have clearly decided that space is valuable. Meeting in Luxembourg to set priorities, and spending commitments, technology and industry ministers backed science, infrastructure and launch capability.
The Luxembourg meeting guaranteed full funding for ESA’s two ExoMars missions, to launch in 2016 and 2018, and gave a second-stage green light to the Ariane 6 programme, which looks to replace the hugely reliable but expensive Ariane 5 launcher with a more cost-efficient rocket from about 2020 or 2021; technical details of the all-solid, modular launch system should be revealed imminently.
Demonstrating the extent to which Europe’s political leadership sees economic and strategic value in maintaining independent, competitive access to space, a proposal by Airbus Defence & Space and Safran to form a joint venture to consolidate the Ariane programmes and streamline the European launcher programme's industrial structure also got the nod, with the details being worked out through 2015, alongside technical work on the new rocket system. Ariane 6’s solid-fuel and modular design should be a major step forward, streamlining the production of rockets and bringing new flexibility to launch campaigns. But all parties recognised that the engineering plan could not realise its cost objectives without the overhaul of a rocket-building ecosystem designed to spread work across a dozen countries – a product of European consensus politics rather than any industrial sense.
So, in a sense Europe is now facing its greatest challenge in spaceflight. Ariane 5 is the world’s leader in the lucrative market for telecommunications satellite launches, and provides invaluable access to space for even the biggest payloads, but it faces fierce commercial pressure from SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and, in the coming decade, from a new modular concept recently unveiled by the Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture, United Launch Alliance.
The coming months will be critical; Airbus and Safran need to show that their joint venture can come together, and Europe’s politicians need to maintain the will to stand aside and leave the private sector to drive the project. To a great extent, it will be down to the European Commission to ensure that Ariane 6 remains depoliticised.
And, another significant transition is imminent. ESA director general Jean-Jacques Dordain will retire on 30 June after more than a decade in the job, and be replaced by Johann-Dietrich "Jan" Wörner, head of Germany’s DLR aerospace agency since 2007. Dordain has been a most able leader and will be missed for his political skills as much as his mission focus, not to mention his endearing sang-froid. However, Wörner is the obvious choice to replace him – and a good one, given his proven ability to marshal a wide range of resources from many partners.
Wörner believes nothing substantial can happen without public engagement; the key to progress is for politicians, scientists, engineers, business people and organisations like DLR and ESA to recognise that the public is a driver of technological solutions, not just a receiver of them.
67P, by Rosetta
ESA
Wörner's stewardship also promises to continue Dordain's legacy of an ESA which shows the way when it comes to realising projects that rely on deep-rooted, reliable collaboration – such as the International Space Station or, ultimately, any human missions to Mars.
In space, then, Europe is on a roll. Nothing actually rolls in space, of course, except maybe a Mars rover – and Europe’s is rolling along just fine, driving toward the next stage in ESA’s bid to advance humankind’s quest for an answer to the question: “Is there life on Mars?”
When the 2015 Paris air show opens, the cleanest clean room in Europe will be approaching completion, at Airbus Defence & Space in Stevenage, UK. Clean enough to ensure no biological specimens are clinging on for the ride, work should begin early in 2016 on the rover that will fly in 2018 on the second half of ESA’s two-stage ExoMars mission.
Meanwhile, ExoMars 1 – an orbiter and a lander, to test entry, descent and landing technology for the 2018 rover arrival – is being prepped for launch in 2016. That mission, to be carried by Russian launches after NASA had to pull out owing to budget cuts, promises to carry on where Rosetta leaves off, pushing Europe’s mark into deepest space.
Source: FlightGlobal.com
