Tag: ESA

Cave exploration the astronaut way

11:18 am

How not to go cave exploring:

An international crew of six astronauts will start training for a caving adventure designed to prepare them for spaceflight. CAVES, an abbreviation of Cooperative Adventure for Valuing and Exercising human behaviour and performance Skills, prepares astronauts to work safely and effectively and solve problems as a multicultural team while exploring uncharted areas using space procedures.

Or to put it more bluntly, overly complicated, bureaucratically organized, and not very efficient. For example:
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ESA is revamping how it builds rockets in order to compete with SpaceX.

11:28 pm

The competition heats up: ESA is revamping how it builds rockets in order to compete with SpaceX.

ESA officials have been spooked by Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, Calif., which has demonstrated its technical prowess with the launch of its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon cargo vehicle to the international space station. SpaceX officials say one of the keys to its success is that Falcon 9 is built in one factory owned by SpaceX.

Read the whole thing. The way ESA builds the Ariane rocket requires too many participants (what we in the U.S. call pork), raising its cost. ESA is now abandoning that approach to cut costs and thus compete with SpaceX.

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A European Space Agency (ESA) working group has recommended the agency focus its next manned space project on redesigning its now abandoned ATV cargo ship as a service module for the U.S.’s Orion capsule.

9:14 am

Birds of a feather: A European Space Agency (ESA) working group has recommended the agency focus its next manned space project on redesigning its now abandoned ATV cargo ship as a service module for the U.S.’s Orion capsule.

Believe it or not, this is how ESA plans to pay for its use of ISS from 2017 to 2020, by abandoning the ATV (which supplies ISS) and building a service module for a capsule that might never launch and is not intended to go to ISS anyway.

But then, it isn’t surprising, coming from a government agency.

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Europe ponders choosing the design of the next generation Ariane rocket.

4:25 pm

Europe ponders the design choices for the next generation of their Ariane rocket.

Though the article above makes no mention of Falcon 9 and its very low launch costs, I have no doubt that Falcon 9 hovers like a ghost over the negotiations on what ESA will do with Ariane 5, a rocket that despite an excellent launch record has never really been able to make a profit due to high costs.

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Europe has decided to build a probe, dubbed JUICE, to study Ganymede, Callisto and Europa, Jupiter’s big icy moons.

5:31 pm

Europe has decided to build a probe to study Ganymede, Callisto and Europa, Jupiter’s big icy moons.

Known as JUICE, the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, the probe will enter orbit around the gas giant planet in 2030 for a series of flybys of Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. JUICE will brake into orbit around Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon, in 2032 for at least one year of close-up research.

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In closing down its ATV cargo freighter assembly line, Europe considers its next manned space project.

9:49 am

In closing down its ATV cargo freighter assembly line, Europe considers its next manned space project.

ESA and NASA have been discussing how ESA might compensate NASA for Europe’s 8.3 percent share of the international space station’s future operating charges. Until about 2017, the agency is repaying NASA, as the station’s general contractor, through launches of European Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) cargo ships to the station. But with the station partners now all but committed to operating the station at least through 2020, ESA is searching for another “barter element” to succeed ATV.

NASA has said a propulsion module for the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle would fill ESA’s obligations to NASA, which have been estimated at about 450 million euros ($600 million) over three years.

But several ESA members, notably France and Italy, have argued that the Orion module, which would use ATV-derived technologies, does not provide sufficient technology interest or public impact. Instead, these governments have proposed development of a vehicle that would perform multiple tasks in low Earth orbit, including debris removal.

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Europe’s primary Earth-observation satellite has gone silent.

9:15 am

Europe’s primary Earth-observation satellite, Envisat, has gone silent.

Launched in 2002, the satellite is billed as the most sophisticated environmental monitor in orbit, with ten instruments providing streams of valuable data on everything from ozone, clouds and greenhouse gases to land-use trends and sea-surface temperatures — data that have figured in more than 2,000 scientific publications, ESA says. Over the years, Envisat has also offered a unique vantage point on major environmental disasters such as the December 2004 earthquake and tsunami in southeast Asia and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Now, scientists fear that the satellite’s decade-long run has come to an abrupt end.

Problems began on 8 April when the satellite’s signal cut out as it was passing over a ground station in Sweden. ESA has been working with a team of scientists and engineers to diagnose the problem and to re-establish contact, but the outlook remains unclear.

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Europe has shut down the production line producing their ATV cargo craft for ISS.

10:39 am

Is this good or bad news? Europe has shut down the production line producing their ATV cargo craft for ISS.

Confronted by parts obsolescence and waning political support, the European Space Agency has shut down subsystem production lines for the Automated Transfer Vehicle as member states debate how they will contribute to future international space exploration efforts, according to top spaceflight officials.

ESA has launched three of the five ATVs it agreed to launch, with the remaining two scheduled in 2013 and 2014. What happens after that remains unclear. It seems from the article the European partners don’t seem interested in upgrading the ATV, and instead seem willing to let the as-yet untried U.S. commercial companies carry the load.

Commercial flights by U.S. spacecraft will make up the rest of the lost capacity with the end of the ATV program.

The pressure continues to build on a successful Falcon 9/Dragon flight on April 30.

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