Three more NASA shuttle flights may get ok’d

May 21 2008

by William Atkins

The legislation would also authorize additional money to speed development of the new Constellation program, and to prolong U.S. presence on the Space Station.

The legislation, H.R. 6063, is called (short title) the “National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2008 .” [Florida Today]

The extra money, if approved, would involve a mission to send the science instrument Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) to the International Space Station. The AMS is a particle physics experiment that is designed to study the evolution of the Universe and to look for unusual objects in the Universe, such as dark matter and antimatter—all by measuring cosmic rays. Currently, the House bill authorizes US$150 million for the AMS mission.

AMS, a point effort of the U.S. Department of Energy and sixteen other international organizations, was originally part of a shuttle mission, but was cancelled after the space shuttle Columbia disaster placed extra constraints on the mission schedule.
 

The other two missions are already on NASA’s roster of contingency logistic flights (CLFs)—and thus are currently budgeted. The legislation would, simply, authorize NASA to fly these missions.

These two CLFs are STS-131, now scheduled to be flown in February 2010, and STS-133, scheduled to be flown in May 2010. Both would be assembly missions to the ISS, where STS-131 would bring Express 3 and 4 to the Space Station, along with the Docking Cargo Module, and STS-133, would bring Express 1 and 5. Both flights are bringing up cargo that, currently, only the space shuttle can handle, due to their size.

The last scheduled flight is STS-132 (STS-131 if the CLFs are not flown), which is now scheduled to depart for the International Space Station in March 2010. Space shuttle Discovery is scheduled to carry Node 3 and Cupola to the ISS. 

The House bill was introduced by Representative Mark Udall (Democrat from Colorado), Representative Tom Feeney (Republican from Florida), Representative Ralph Hall (Republican from Texas) and Representative Bart Gordon (Democrat from Tennessess). Udall is the chairperson for the House Subcommittee Space and Aeronautics, within the House Committee for Science and Technology.

Currently, the U.S. Senate does not have parallel legislation on its docket of activities. Both the Senate and House would have to sign similar legislation before being accepted or rejected by President Bush.

In all, NASA stated in February 2008, that each added space shuttle flight would cost approximately $300 to $400 million. In addition, NASA administrator Michael Griffin stated that extending the STS program by one year would cost between $2.7 and $4.0 billion.

The February 2008 report sent to the U.S. Congress stated, “In summary, the existing space shuttle flight schedule, and potentially up to two contingency logistics flights, may be achievable before the [space shuttle's September] 2010 retirement. However, the program does not have a significant amount of margin to accommodate an additional flight for AMS without significant impacts to future exploration goals, cost, and possibly safety.” [USA Today, “House bill would authorize additional shuttle flights"]

The NASA Authorization Act of 2008, now set before the U.S. House, would also like to provide NASA with an additional $1 billion so that the operational start of the Constellation project, which includes the Orion space capsule and Aries launch vehicle, would be before its current timeframe of 2014/ 2015. Some members of Congress, and other people in the space industry, are concerned that the United States will have no manned launching capabilities from the end of the Space Shuttle program (around 2010/2011) to the start of the Orion/Ares program (about 2014/2015).

The House bill also indicates that the United States should commit to four additional years of participation at the International Space Station—extending itself out past 2016.