Joining forces for space exploration

Space-going nations to work closer together.

The world’s leading space-going nations last Thursday (21 October) agreed on a set of specific steps intended to ensure there is greater co-operation in future efforts to explore space. 

Space ministers from the 18 member states of the European Space Agency (ESA) – 16 EU states plus Norway and Switzerland – and their counterparts from most of the world’s space-going nations agreed to create an international platform at which high-level political leaders would meet regularly to chart the course of future co-operation to develop systems capable of taking robots and humans to the Moon, Mars and near-Earth asteroids. The first meeting will be held in late 2011, in Lucca, Italy.

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Competition and co-operation

More broadly, they agreed that there should be ‘competition within co-operation’ in space exploration, with co-operation in operations, and competition to develop technologies. The intention is to ensure that the main elements in each future exploration programme would come in several models, provided by distinct sources but with common features.

This should also ensure that no single nation would be able to appropriate an international venture for its own benefit, for instance by securing control over key elements and technologies that no one else could provide.

Just days before, on 19 October, the EU and its partners in the International Space Station (ISS) – Canada, Japan, Russia and the US – provided an example of how such an agreement would change exploration when, after 15 years of technical talks, they approved a common docking interface for future vehicles to the ISS. Currently, the ISS has four different types of docking collars, none of them compatible with the others. Such differences have forced the development of adaptors to serve as the new interface on the orbital outpost. These will not, however, be ready before 2014.

The consensus reached last week amounts only to commitments, but nonetheless marks a significant change in attitude in an area previously typified more by competition than by co-operation.

The understanding was achieved at a conference in Brussels, which, while entitled the European Conference on Space Exploration, was attended by ministers from almost all nations with a major space programme, notably the ESA’s partners in the ISS and China, South Africa, South Korea and Ukraine.

The only space-going nations not to attend were Argentina, Brazil, India, Israel and Taiwan.

Joint commitment

The commitment to increase co-operation reflects a decision by the president of the EU, the European Commission and the ESA to propose a framework for co-operation. They are seizing on opportunities presented by both the economic crisis and US President Barack Obama’s decision in February to abort George W. Bush’s Constellation programme.

Obama abandoned Constellation, a unilateralist initiative to return to the Moon that would have done little to advance space technology, in favour of a new long-term endeavour, open to international co-operation, to develop advanced technologies for manned missions to Mars and asteroids. Obama’s new roadmap also extended the use of the ISS, from 2015 until at least 2020.

Development funding

Last week’s political success may help ESA delegates to agree, at their next meeting in December, to provide funding for ISS operations until 2020 and for the development of an advanced return vehicle (ARV) to return material – and, someday, people – to earth.

The ARV capsule would address one of the problems created by a lack of co-ordination. “We have far more upload capacity to the ISS than needed and almost no download capacity for experiments and samples,” Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA’s director, said at the conference, referring to capacity to take material to the ISS and return it.

“What is worse is that we only have one manned vehicle to ferry crews back and forth: Russia’s Soyuz. That’s a single-point failure issue,” Dordain said.

Stefan Barensky is a journalist specialising in space issues.