It's been a
busy year for spaceflight in the U.S. and around the world, with an even more
ambitious slate ahead for 2008.
On the home
front, NASA launched
three shuttle missions to the International Space Station (ISS), where
astronauts laid the framework for new European and Japanese laboratories set to
fly next year even as they uncovered new glitches with the outpost's solar
arrays.
"I think
that we have accomplished a lot post-Columbia, and that this last year has been
our proving ground," said the space station's current commander Peggy Whitson,
the first female ISS skipper, this month.
Malaysia's
first astronaut and a record space tourist flight also launched toward the ISS
in 2007, which saw a myriad of science probes rocket spaceward while the Space
Age turned 50. China and Japan also made great strides this year, launching
their first moon probes as both countries prepare to send crewed spacecraft
into orbit next year.
Orbital
construction leaps forward
While a
freak hail storm in February delayed the start of NASA's shuttle flight plan
for months, the U.S. agency bounced back to complete three missions that added
new solar arrays, truss segments and the Harmony connecting room to the ISS.
Astronauts moved
old, massive trusses, stitched up torn solar wings and overcame crippling
computer glitches while outfitting the ISS with new segments. Engineers are
currently grappling with the station's balky starboard solar wing joints, with
repairs slated for sometime next year.
"Obviously,
it hasn't gone along flawlessly, but that's part of the process too," said
Whitson, adding that only by tackling such challenges will humanity learn how
to better explore space.
The
construction work culminated in a November marathon of spacewalks and robotics by
Whitson and her crewmates to ready their station for a fourth shuttle flight—since
delayed—bearing Europe's Columbus laboratory. Columbus will dock at the
station's Harmony node, the first new room to arrive at the ISS since 2001.
"The
activity we just did on [the] station is probably the most complicated assembly
we have ever done," said William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator
for space operations. "And all that has worked precisely as we needed it to
work."
NASA plans
up to 12 more shuttle flights to complete ISS construction, plus one more to
the Hubble Space Telescope, before its three-orbiter fleet retires in 2010. Six
shuttle flights are currently on NASA's docket for 2008.
"I think
we've got easily the capability to go fly the four flights a year that we need
to do to complete our manifest," Gerstenmaier said.
Asian
Space Race
China began this year with a bang,
literally, when it destroyed a defunct communications platform during a January
anti-satellite
test that spurred widespread criticism from countries around the world.
"They
really do seem to have been caught off guard," said China space specialist Dean
Cheng, a senior Asia analyst with CNA Corp. in Arlington, Va., of the country's
surprise from the protests. "And the damage control efforts that they've
undertaken have, frankly, been poor."
But the
test kicked off a busy launch period for China and Japan capped by the near
launches of separate lunar orbiters—Chang'e 1 and Kaguya, respectively—to
explore the surface of the moon. The year also saw Malaysia's first astronaut launch
to the ISS aboard a Russian spacecraft and return during a harrowing ballistic
descent with two professional cosmonauts.
"This was,
in a sense, the first wave of Asia's jump into space," Cheng said of 2007.
"This is not a high-impact, pedal-to-the-metal kind of race."
Unlike the
Space Race between the U.S. and former Soviet Union, the international
competition for space prowess in Asia reaches past national prestige, he added.
"The
Chinese are still, for better or worse, head and shoulders above the rest
simply because they're putting up their own astronauts up on their own
vehicle," Cheng said.
China is the third country, after Russia and the U.S., to build and launch spacecraft capable of carrying astronauts into orbit.
South Korea's first astronaut is slated to
launch to the space station atop a Russian rocket in 2008 after, if all goes
well, Japanese astronauts visit the ISS to help install segments of their
country's massive
Kibo laboratory. When fully assembled, Kibo will be the largest single lab
attached to the ISS.
Meanwhile, China is gearing up to launch its third manned spaceflight, with three astronauts and a
planned spacewalk, in fall 2008.
"These
countries are competing with each other to say, 'We are a first world, first
rate, aerospace and scientifically advanced country,'" Cheng said. "Take us
seriously, invest in us, hire our people, all of those factors. And I think in
the next several years you're going to see an even higher growth rate."
The road
ahead
While
national space agencies made steady progress, commercial firms met with mixed
results highlighted by Bigelow Aerospace's successful second launch of a
prototype space station and the tragic explosion that killed three and wounded
three others.
NASA is
banking on advances in commercial spaceflight to help bridge the anticipated
years-long gap between the space shuttle fleet's retirement and the first
flights of its replacement—the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle.
The U.S. space agency completed awarding contracts for the spacecraft's Ares I rocket among other
milestones, with the first abort test flights planned for 2008.
"[I]t's
been an important year for us," Whitson said. "And I'd like to think
that it's been very successful."
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