Recycling ISS modules


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Aviation Week....

Move Space Station Parts Toward The Moon?

Governments and industry involved in the International Space Station are tempering their plans for human exploration to fit today?s tough economic environment, including a look at recycling ISS components for use beyond low Earth orbit after 2020.

ISS partner-agency chiefs who met here at the 62nd International Astronautical Congress (IAC) last week will take the first tentative steps toward joint exploration of the Solar System, based both on the ISS model for cooperation and perhaps on some station hardware as well.

?Could we take a module, pull it off the station instead of deorbiting it into the ocean?? asks William Gerstenmaier, associate NASA administrator for human exploration and operations. ?Could we take some module that has some value to us in exploration architecture and move it to [Lagrangian point] L1 or move it to a lunar orbit and actually use it in another location??

NASA and the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, have agreed to set up an ?expert-level group? to review exploration targets for joint cooperation, provided the two sides can agree on where to go and how to get there. Vladimir Popovkin, the new Roscosmos head, told an IAC plenary that deep-space exploration is ?unthinkable without broader international cooperation,? because of the cost.

Later, in an interview with Aviation Week, the new space chief said Russia plans to use the new cosmodrome at Vostochny for human exploration beyond low Earth orbit, while the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan will continue to be the starting point for Russian missions to the ISS.

The Vostochny Cosmodrome, in Russia?s Far East, is still in the ?paper stage,? Popovkin says, with construction due to begin next year. The first launch of a ?Soyuz family? test vehicle from the new site is targeted for 2015, but beyond that the path is murky. The discussions with NASA may help clarify the issue, he says.

?In order to talk about how to share our inputs to the [exploration] project, first of all we must reach an understanding of what targets we have,? Popovkin says through an interpreter. ?After this is decided, we will be able to specify shares, and how they will contribute to each other.?

Stressing that it is very early in the process, Gerstenmaier says similar talks are under way with the European Space Agency (ESA), Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Canadian Space Agency (CSA). An international industrial panel of ISS contractors is also beginning to consider what happens after station funding ends in 2020. For his part, Popovkin says Russia is also studying solo station operations if there is no agreement on a larger plan.

Among the ideas under consideration is a shift in the barter arrangements ISS member governments use to share the cost of operations. ESA and NASA are studying whether it would make sense for the European agency to stop providing Automated Transfer Vehicles (ATV) for cargo deliveries to the ISS and build the service module for the Orion-based Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) instead.

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  • 2 weeks later...

awesome post and awesome news, finally some sensible thinking when it comes to space exploration. don't de-orbit those modules, so people worked so hard to make them a reality, move them to moon orbit, or heck, land them on the moon and you got an instant moon base, if a very crude one.

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awesome post and awesome news, finally some sensible thinking when it comes to space exploration. don't de-orbit those modules, so people worked so hard to make them a reality, move them to moon orbit, or heck, land them on the moon and you got an instant moon base, if a very crude one.

Putting it into an orbit around the moon seems a lot more logical, though, the task would be hard for a whole station. :p

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