Discovering the frontiers
Furthering its ambitions to explore the Moon, the Mars and the solar system itself, NASA is expected to test the new exploration vehicle Ares 1 by 2008, says Amitabha Ghosh.
NASA had spent three years and $1.3 billion to make shuttle flights safer. So when Shuttle Discovery docked safely with the International Space Station on July 6, there was much relief. After reports of inspections both in space and on the ground came in, there was some assurance that the shuttle will be able to fly back easily and reach the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday evening ( IST), as scheduled.
The astronauts have completed three spacewalks during which they tested heat shield repairs on the shuttle’s wings. This was to test whether in future the crew of a Shuttle in flight will be able to fix the ship’s damaged heat shield. While floating outside the shuttle (technically called EVAs, Extra Vehicular Activities), the crew also completed five test panel repairs and the inspection of the shuttle’s hydraulic systems. They used an experimental repair kit to fix cracked samples of the reinforced carbon-carbon material that protects the shuttle from high temperatures up to 3,000 degrees during its atmospheric re-entry.
Using a 50-foot extension boom attached to the shuttle’s robotic arm, the astronauts checked for possible damage to the shuttle’s wing by small space debris or micrometeoroid. These activities are unprecedented and will enhance the safety of future shuttle flights. Thus, in future, there will be greater scrutiny on possible damage to the shuttle during launch and if such damage was to occur, the astronauts would hopefully be able to fix most of the damage.
With a largely successful set of events in the past few days, it does appear that the Shuttle program will again be operating like it did before the Columbia disaster of February 2003, at least for the better part of the next four years, until NASA retires its aged Shuttle fleet by the end of 2010.
With the resumption of Shuttle flights, NASA will be able to use it to send cargo once again: specifically the equipment required to finish building the International Space Station, a US led venture of 16 nations. This is a huge
benefit as construction work at the $100 billion orbital outpost had stalled ever since Columbia disaster. Hopefully work on the Space Station will be complete by 2010, as projected. An estimated 15
shuttle missions will be required to
finish work on the space station.
One of the short term goals for the
human spaceflight program is the
completion of the International Space Station. This multinational platform in orbit will teach men and women from various cultures how to live and work in space. After the station is completed NASA will be able to take up the
challenge of exploration beyond low Earth orbit - to the Moon, to Mars and the Solar system.
New manned vehicle
For this, a new manned vehicle is
being developed. The new craft which started off with the name Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) and rechristened as Ares 1 recently, will be developed and tested by 2008 and will conduct its first manned mission by 2014. Ares 1 will also transport astronauts and scientists to the International Space Station after the Shuttle fleet is retired.
The US had beaten the Soviets in the race for the conquest of the Moon, when in July 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the world’s first two
human beings to land on the Moon. NASA had followed this up by sending ten more Americans to our natural satellite. However, for more than three decades no human being has visited the Moon. Now, NASA will use Ares 1 for
returning astronauts to the Moon by 2020 and use the CEV as a stepping stone for sending human beings to Mars and
beyond. A series of robotic missions to the Moon will explore the lunar surface between now and 2020: and the data will be ofhelp for future human exploration of the moon.
The goal of this second wave of lunar exploration will be living and working on the moon for increasingly extended
periods and to develop new technologies (for example, for in situ resource mobilisation: like extraction of Oxygen from the lunar soil) which will reduce costs and improve efficiency. An extended
human presence on the moon would
prepare us for the ultimate thrill: the
voyage to Mars, more than one hundred
million miles, expected to take a few months, compared to a three-day journey to the moon.
It is possible that a 100 years from now, in the year 2106, our descendants would watch astronauts travelling to Mars on a fairly regular basis, just as we watch men and women travel to the International Space Station today.
The author is a member of the NASA’s Rover Mission