Completing the International Space Station, explains NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, is an integral part of the Vision for Space Exploration.
"Today," Griffin writes, "NASA is moving forward with a new focus for the manned space program: to go out beyond Earth orbit for purposes of human exploration and scientific discovery. And the International Space Station is now a stepping stone on the way, rather than being the end of the line."
all photos credit: www.nasa.gov/shuttle
CAUTION: SPACE STATION CONSTRUCTION ZONE
REDUCED SPEED AHEAD: 17,500 m.p.h. (28,000 k.p.h.)
Europe's Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) is part of the ISS's vital supply line.
Each ATV has a precision navigation system to guide it along a rendezvous trajectory towards the space station, where it automatically docks with the Russian service module.
An ATV will remain docked with the station for six months. During that time, a some seven tons of station trash will be dumped into the ATV. After six months, the ATV will back out of the dock and drop into the atmosphere where it will burn up.
A typical ATV flight will begin at launch atop an Ariane-5 rocket from the French Guiana equatorial site up to a 160-mile-high orbit, piloted remotely by the European Space Agency from the European-controlled spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.
NASA is in talks with several government agencies, most notably the National Institutes of Health, and private businesses that want to conduct research in the International Space Station orbiting above Earth.
NASA and its 15 partner nations, including Russia, Canada, Japan and European countries, plan to finish construction of the space station in 2010, when the U.S. space shuttles are grounded and NASA focuses its manned spaceflight program on returning to the moon with a fleet of Orion spacecraft.
For the past two years, much of the science at the space station has been oriented toward returning astronauts to the moon, and even going on to Mars.
"We didn't need the entire capacity of the space station to do exploration-related research," said Mark Uhran, NASA's assistant associate administrator of the space station. "So the capacity that was freed up after we restructured our program is now available to other agencies or private sector companies."
The space station's first section was launched in 1998 and it has been inhabited continuously since 2000 by Russian, U.S. and European crew mates. By 2009, the station's three-member crew is expected to grow to six people.
Once it is completed, about half the space station's U.S. section would be available for the use by outsiders, who wouldn't have to pay a fee for its use.
NASA's plans to open up the space station to outsiders, though, depend on whether private companies build spaceships that could travel to the outpost as a replacement for the grounded shuttles after 2010. NASA has given $500 million in seed money to two private companies to build spacecraft and has signed agreements with others.
The transportation system is a critical factor.
Space Shuttle Discovery arrives with the Harmony module: October 25, 2007
Space Shuttle Atlantis arrives with esa's Columbus module: Feb 09, 2008
STS-123: Endeavour
Space Shuttle Endeavour Arrives with Japan's Kibo and Canada's DEXTRE robot 03/2008
NEXT ARRIVALS:
STS-124: Discovery
KIBO ASSEMBLY FLIGHT