With the SpaceX partnership, ISS begins its ‘Golden Age’ – but what’s next?

After 20 years of continuous occupation, the International Space Station has penetrated its ‘Golden Age’ and is full of activity – thanks to the return of American rockets by commercial partner SpaceX.

But while the near future of this symbol of cooperation after the Cold War is assured, NASA wants to start disconnecting by the end of the decade, leaving a gap that the private sector and China hope to fill.

“This space station has become the spaceport we wanted it to be,” Kathy Lueders, head of NASA’s human space program, said at a recent news conference.

The end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011 made America dependent on Russian Soyuz rockets for a taxi ride to the giant satellite.

SpaceX changed that last year with the success of its Crew Dragon, which is now preparing for its second routine crew flight, and the third overall, in April.

“Our recent agreements with the U.S. private industry have enabled us to bring more people to space, more people to the International Space Station,” said Joel Montalbano, NASA’s ISS Program Manager.

Since the spacecraft can carry four people – compared to three for Soyuz – the standard crew size of the space station has grown from six to seven people.

The ISS therefore needs a new bed – with assembly currently underway.

SpaceX’s Crew-2 mission launches from Florida on April 22, and the four astronauts will overlap with the crew of Crew-1 for a few days before the team returns from their six-month mission.

During this time, the station will house no less than 11 people.

“We’ll be kind of, I think in a camping mode,” joked Crew-2 crew commander Shane Kimbrough.

“We just get a place to sleep on a wall somewhere or on the ceiling, it doesn’t matter upstairs.”

Science in the foreground

“We are entering the Golden Age of using the ISS,” said David Parker, director of human and robot at the European Space Agency (ESA).

It was former President Ronald Reagan who appealed to the “pioneering spirit” of America when he ordered NASA to “develop a permanent crew of the space station.”

The first components were sent into space in 1998, while the first crew spent several months there in 2000.

The latest pressure module was installed in 2011, leaving the enormous artificial satellite 109 meters from end to end, about the size of an American football field.

“For the first half of the space station’s life, the main focus was on building it,” said Robert Pearlman, a space historian and author of ‘Space Stations: The Art, Science, and Reality of Working in Space’. AFP said.

Astronauts still have to work on maintenance work, but most of their time is spent conducting hundreds of scientific investigations, he added.

More than 3,000 experiments were performed in this microgravity laboratory, which averages 400 kilometers above the earth and 28,000 km / h.

What next?

The immediate future of the ISS is officially secured until 2024 by the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada.

“From a technical point of view, we let the ISS fly until the end of 2028,” NASA told AFP in a statement. “In addition, our analysis did not identify any issues that would prevent us from going beyond 2028.”

Montalbano told AFP he plans to launch an analysis for the 2028-2032 period later this year.

The use of the space station is expected to evolve.

NASA, which wants to disconnect financially to focus on its deep space exploration with its Moon to Mars missions, announced in 2019 that it would welcome tourists aboard the ISS to reimburse the cost.

They ride with SpaceX or Boeing – whose own taxi program, “Starliner”, lags behind.

“My hope is that we will fly the first private astronaut mission in 2022,” Montalbano told AFP.

Participants are also on hand.

The private company Axiom Space wants to build the first commercial space station in the world – first by connecting its modules to the ISS, before the orbit is finally detached and started.

China plans to launch its own large space station, Tiangong, this year and hopes to complete it by 2022.

Russia and China last week announced plans for a joint lunar station, ‘on the surface and / or in the orbit of the moon’, starting a new space alliance.

The move came after Moscow refused to participate in Gateway, NASA’s proposed lunar station.

It could then be a fitting symbol of the end of decades of long-term space partnership between America and Russia when the ISS finally revolves and crashes into an ocean.

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© 2021 AFP