The International Space Station (ISS) is truly an international undertaking. The project is being led by the United States, with the participation of Japan, the European Space Agency, Canada, Italy, Russia, and Brazil. Russia is participating in full partnership with the United States in the fabrication of ISS modules, the assembly of ISS elements on orbit, and, after assembly has been completed, the day-to-day operation of the station. Construction of the ISS began with the launch of the Russian Zarya module in November 1998 followed by the launch of the U.S. Unity module in December 1998. The two modules were mated and interconnected by the crew of the Space Shuttle during the December flight, and the first assembled element of the ISS was in place. Construction will continue with the delivery of components and assembly on orbit through a series of 46 planned flights. During the study period, the Assembly Complete milestone was scheduled for November 2004 with the final ISS construction flight delivering the U.S. Habitation Module. Engineering Challenges to the Long-Term Operation of the International Space Station is a study of the engineering challenges posed by longterm operation of the ISS. This report states that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the ISS developers have focused almost totally on completing the design and development of the station and completing its assembly in orbit. This report addresses the issues and opportunities related to long-term operations.
The Space Station Freedom program is the next major U.S. manned space initiative. It has as its objective the establishment of a permanently manned facility in low earth orbit. This book summarizes the main findings and recommendations of a workshop that examined the space station program with a view toward identifying critical engineering issues related to the design and operation of the station.
The International Space Station (ISS) is truly an international undertaking. The project is being led by the United States, with the participation of Japan, the European Space Agency, Canada, Italy, Russia, and Brazil. Russia is participating in full partnership with the United States in the fabrication of ISS modules, the assembly of ISS elements on orbit, and, after assembly has been completed, the day-to-day operation of the station. Construction of the ISS began with the launch of the Russian Zarya module in November 1998 followed by the launch of the U.S. Unity module in December 1998. The two modules were mated and interconnected by the crew of the Space Shuttle during the December flight, and the first assembled element of the ISS was in place. Construction will continue with the delivery of components and assembly on orbit through a series of 46 planned flights. During the study period, the Assembly Complete milestone was scheduled for November 2004 with the final ISS construction flight delivering the U.S. Habitation Module. Engineering Challenges to the Long-Term Operation of the International Space Station is a study of the engineering challenges posed by longterm operation of the ISS. This report states that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the ISS developers have focused almost totally on completing the design and development of the station and completing its assembly in orbit. This report addresses the issues and opportunities related to long-term operations.
The Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) announced by President George W. Bush in 2004 sets NASA and the nation on a bold path to return to the Moon and one day put a human on Mars. The long-term endeavor represented by the VSE is, however, subject to the constraints imposed by annual funding. Given that the VSE may take tens of years to implement, a significant issue is whether NASA and the United States will have the workforce needed to achieve that vision. The issues range from short-term concerns about the current workforce's skills for overseeing the development of new spacecraft and launch vehicles for the VSE to long-term issues regarding the training, recruiting, and retaining of scientists and engineers in-house as well as in industry and academia. Asked to explore science and technology (S&T) workforce needs to achieve the nation's long-term space exploration, the Committee on Meeting the Workforce Needs for the National Vision for Space Exploration concluded that in the short term, NASA does not possess the requisite in-house personnel with the experience in human spaceflight systems development needed to implement the VSE. But the committee acknowledges that NASA is cognizant of this fact and has taken steps to correct it, primarily by seeking to recruit highly skilled personnel from outside NASA, including persons from industry and retirees. For the long term, NASA has to ask if it is attracting and developing the talent it will need to execute a mission to return to the Moon, and the agency must identify what it needs to do to attract and develop a world-class workforce to explore other worlds. A major challenge for NASA is reorienting its human spaceflight workforce from the operation of current vehicles to the development of new vehicles at least throughout the next decade, as well as starting operations with new rockets and new spacecraft. The committee emphasizes further that when evaluating its future workforce requirements, NASA has to consider not only programs for students, but also training opportunities for its current employees. NASA's training programs at the agency's various field centers, which are focused on NASA's civil service talent, require support to prevent the agency's internal skill base from withering. Furthermore, NASA faces the risk that, if it fails to nurture its own internal workforce, skilled personnel will be attracted to other government agencies and industry. Building a Better NASA Workforce: Meeting the Workforce Needs for the National Vision for Space Exploration explains the findings and recommendations of the committee.
The United States has publicly funded its human spaceflight program on a continuous basis for more than a half-century, through three wars and a half-dozen recessions, from the early Mercury and Gemini suborbital and Earth orbital missions, to the lunar landings, and thence to the first reusable winged crewed spaceplane that the United States operated for three decades. Today the United States is the major partner in a massive orbital facility - the International Space Station - that is becoming the focal point for the first tentative steps in commercial cargo and crewed orbital space flights. And yet, the long-term future of human spaceflight beyond this project is unclear. Pronouncements by multiple presidents of bold new ventures by Americans to the Moon, to Mars, and to an asteroid in its native orbit, have not been matched by the same commitment that accompanied President Kennedy\'s now fabled 1961 speech-namely, the substantial increase in NASA funding needed to make it happen. Are we still committed to advancing human spaceflight? What should a long-term goal be, and what does the United States need to do to achieve it? Pathways to Exploration explores the case for advancing this endeavor, drawing on the history of rationales for human spaceflight, examining the attitudes of stakeholders and the public, and carefully assessing the technical and fiscal realities. This report recommends maintaining the long-term focus on Mars as the horizon goal for human space exploration. With this goal in mind, the report considers funding levels necessary to maintain a robust tempo of execution, current research and exploration projects and the time/resources needed to continue them, and international cooperation that could contribute to the achievement of spaceflight to Mars. According to Pathways to Exploration, a successful U.S. program would require sustained national commitment and a budget that increases by more than the rate of inflation. In reviving a U.S. human exploration program capable of answering the enduring questions about humanity's destiny beyond our tiny blue planet, the nation will need to grapple with the attitudinal and fiscal realities of the nation today while staying true to a small but crucial set of fundamental principles for the conduct of exploration of the endless frontier. The recommendations of Pathways to Exploration provide a clear map toward a human spaceflight program that inspires students and citizens by furthering human exploration and discovery, while taking into account the long-term commitment necessary to achieve this goal.
In January 2006, the President announced a new civilian space policy focusing on exploration. As part of its preparations to implement that policy, NASA asked the NRC to explore long-range science and technology workforce needs to achieve the space exploration vision, identify obstacles to filling those needs, and put forward solutions to those obstacles. As part of the study, the NRC held a workshop to identify important factors affecting NASA's future workforce and its capacity to implement the exploration vision. This interim report presents a summary of the highlights of that workshop and an initial set of findings. The report provides a review of the workforce implications of NASA's plans, an assessment of science and technology workforce demographics, an analysis of factors affecting the aerospace workforce for both NASA and the relevant aerospace industry, and preliminary findings and recommendations. A final report is scheduled for completion in early 2007.
More than four decades have passed since a human first set foot on the Moon. Great strides have been made in our understanding of what is required to support an enduring human presence in space, as evidenced by progressively more advanced orbiting human outposts, culminating in the current International Space Station (ISS). However, of the more than 500 humans who have so far ventured into space, most have gone only as far as near-Earth orbit, and none have traveled beyond the orbit of the Moon. Achieving humans' further progress into the solar system had proved far more difficult than imagined in the heady days of the Apollo missions, but the potential rewards remain substantial. During its more than 50-year history, NASA's success in human space exploration has depended on the agency's ability to effectively address a wide range of biomedical, engineering, physical science, and related obstacles-an achievement made possible by NASA's strong and productive commitments to life and physical sciences research for human space exploration, and by its use of human space exploration infrastructures for scientific discovery. The Committee for the Decadal Survey of Biological and Physical Sciences acknowledges the many achievements of NASA, which are all the more remarkable given budgetary challenges and changing directions within the agency. In the past decade, however, a consequence of those challenges has been a life and physical sciences research program that was dramatically reduced in both scale and scope, with the result that the agency is poorly positioned to take full advantage of the scientific opportunities offered by the now fully equipped and staffed ISS laboratory, or to effectively pursue the scientific research needed to support the development of advanced human exploration capabilities. Although its review has left it deeply concerned about the current state of NASA's life and physical sciences research, the Committee for the Decadal Survey on Biological and Physical Sciences in Space is nevertheless convinced that a focused science and engineering program can achieve successes that will bring the space community, the U.S. public, and policymakers to an understanding that we are ready for the next significant phase of human space exploration. The goal of this report is to lay out steps and develop a forward-looking portfolio of research that will provide the basis for recapturing the excitement and value of human spaceflight-thereby enabling the U.S. space program to deliver on new exploration initiatives that serve the nation, excite the public, and place the United States again at the forefront of space exploration for the global good.
A major objective of the International Space Station is learning how to cope with the inherent risks of human spaceflightâ€"how to live and work in space for extended periods. The construction of the station itself provides the first opportunity for doing so. Prominent among the challenges associated with ISS construction is the large amount of time that astronauts will be spending doing extravehicular activity (EVA), or "space walks." EVAs from the space shuttle have been extraordinarily successful, most notably the on-orbit repair of the Hubble Space Telescope. But the number of hours of EVA for ISS construction exceeds that of the Hubble repair mission by orders of magnitude. Furthermore, the ISS orbit has nearly twice the inclination to Earth's equator as Hubble's orbit, so it spends part of every 90-minute circumnavigation at high latitudes, where Earth's magnetic field is less effective at shielding impinging radiation. This means that astronauts sweeping through these regions will be considerably more vulnerable to dangerous doses of energetic particles from a sudden solar eruption. Radiation and the International Space Station estimates that the likelihood of having a potentially dangerous solar event during an EVA is indeed very high. This report recommends steps that can be taken immediately, and over the next several years, to provide adequate warning so that the astronauts can be directed to take protective cover inside the ISS or shuttle. The near-term actions include programmatic and operational ways to take advantage of the multiagency assets that currently monitor and forecast space weather, and ways to improve the in situ measurements and the predictive power of current models.
As the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) retires the Space Shuttle and shifts involvement in International Space Station (ISS) operations, changes in the role and requirements of NASA's Astronaut Corps will take place. At the request of NASA, the National Research Council (NRC) addressed three main questions about these changes: what should be the role and size of Johnson Space Center's (JSC) Flight Crew Operations Directorate (FCOD); what will be the requirements of astronaut training facilities; and is the Astronaut Corps' fleet of training aircraft a cost-effective means of preparing astronauts for NASA's spaceflight program? This report presents an assessment of several issues driven by these questions. This report does not address explicitly the future of human spaceflight.
The 2011 National Research Council decadal survey on biological and physical sciences in space, Recapturing a Future for Space Exploration: Life and Physical Sciences Research for a New Era, was written during a critical period in the evolution of science in support of space exploration. The research agenda in space life and physical sciences had been significantly descoped during the programmatic adjustments of the Vision for Space Exploration in 2005, and this occurred in the same era as the International Space Station (ISS) assembly was nearing completion in 2011. Out of that period of change, Recapturing a Future for Space Exploration presented a cogent argument for the critical need for space life and physical sciences, both for enabling and expanding the exploration capabilities of NASA as well as for contributing unique science in many fields that can be enabled by access to the spaceflight environment. Since the 2011 publication of the decadal survey, NASA has seen tremendous change, including the retirement of the Space Shuttle Program and the maturation of the ISS. NASA formation of the Division of Space Life and Physical Sciences Research and Applications provided renewed focus on the research of the decadal survey. NASA has modestly regrown some of the budget of space life and physical sciences within the agency and engaged the U.S. science community outside NASA to join in this research. In addition, NASA has collaborated with the international space science community. This midterm assessment reviews NASA's progress since the 2011 decadal survey in order to evaluate the high-priority research identified in the decadal survey in light of future human Mars exploration. It makes recommendations on science priorities, specifically those priorities that best enable deep space exploration.
Advanced Technology for Human Support in Space was written in response to a request from NASA's Office of Life and Microgravity Sciences and Applications (OLMSA) to evaluate its Advanced Human Support Technology Program. This report reviews the four major areas of the program: advanced life support (ALS), environmental monitoring and control (EMC), extravehicular activities (EVA), and space human factors (SHF). The focus of this program is on long-term technology development applicable to future human long-duration space missions, such as for a hypothetical new mission to the Moon or Mars.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.