SPACE EXPLORATION | Expanding the boundaries of human understanding
16 July 2008
World Space Agencies Coordinate on Future Exploration
International group targets human, robotic expansion into solar system
Washington -- Representatives of 11 space agencies met in Montreal July 10-12 to discuss the best ways to share resources and capabilities in their efforts to reach destinations in the solar system where people may someday live and work.
This gathering is the latest in a series of meetings that is moving international cooperation in space beyond bilateral projects and multilateral partnerships, like that among the United States, Russia, Japan and several European nations to build the International Space Station.
In 2006, NASA hosted a meeting of 13 other space agencies to discuss international interests in space exploration. Together, in The Global Exploration Strategy: The Framework for Coordination, released in May 2007, agency representatives articulated a vision for peaceful robotic and human exploration and developed a common set of exploration themes.
The agencies were Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, the British National Space Centre, France’s Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales, the China National Space Administration, the Canadian Space Agency, Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization, Germany’s Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, the European Space Agency, the Indian Space Research Organisation, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, the Republic of Korea Aerospace Research Institute, NASA, the National Space Agency of Ukraine and Russia’s Roscosmos.
“We considered [the Framework document],” Neal Newman, senior international relations specialist at NASA headquarters, told America.gov, “a shared vision of the role of governments around the world to extend human and robotic presence throughout the solar system.”
PEACEFUL PURPOSES
The International Space Exploration Coordination Group (ISECG), as the effort is formally titled, first met in Berlin in November 2007.
“The ISECG is open to space agencies which have or are developing space exploration capabilities for peaceful purposes and which have a vested interest to participate in the strategic coordination process for space exploration,” the Framework document reads. “In sum, it is not an exclusive club of the 14 agencies that developed the Framework document.”
At the meeting in Montreal, participants established an ISECG secretariat, to be hosted for the first two years by the European Space Agency, and discussed developing tools for sharing information across agencies on exploration capabilities and mission plans.
“It’s difficult to maximize our cooperative opportunities,” Newman said, “unless we have timely, accurate information about [what each agency] is thinking about or planning to do and unless we share that information as early as possible.”
ISECG is developing a tool called InterSECT -- for International Space Exploration Coordination Tool -- that tracks missions and capabilities.
A mission is a single event such as the launch of a spacecraft with specific objectives, destination and timeline. Most missions take five years from concept to launch and last from days to years. Capabilities range from spacecraft to space communications facilities on the ground.
Today, Newman said, “there is really is no way to accurately reflect what the world is doing [in space] at any given point in time. I can envision this tool producing a very interesting integrated space exploration manifest on one piece of paper -- a sort of schedule -- that describes who is going where and doing what.”
STANDARDS IN SPACE
In Montreal, participants took initial steps to identify critical space-infrastructure interfaces -- such as connections among spacecraft, lunar rovers and lunar habitats -- that, if standardized, would increase opportunities for international cooperation.
Standards are requirements that establish uniform engineering or technical criteria, methods, processes and practices, and make it possible to interchangeably use electronics, drive cars and build cities or space stations.
One example of an ad hoc standard today involves the docking mechanism on the International Space Station. The space shuttle uses a Russian-designed mechanism -- the androgynous peripheral attach system -- that was designed for the Soyuz spacecraft.
To build scientific bases or habitats on the moon or Mars, nations must use standardized docking systems, common atmospheric standards, communication protocols and more. ISECG’s job will be to identify all the critical interfaces that should be standardized.
“We may have a habitation module on the surface of the moon that needs to connect to a European-developed habitation module,” Newman said. “There may be a Japanese pressurized rover with people inside that needs to drive across the surface and plug into the habitation module, and there may be a French-developed power station that needs to be able to provide power to all users.”
Standardization also is linked to safety.
“If three countries have the capability to send humans to the lunar surface,” he said, “and only two of them can rescue one another in an emergency and a third one can’t, that’s not good.”
The next step, planned for early 2009, is to have space architects from the space agencies meet to determine how a multilateral outpost might look, then determine the most critical interfaces.
More information on the Global Exploration Strategy is available at the NASA Web site.
