ALBUQUEREQUE, NEW MEXICO -- The U.S. Department of State, NASA, American aerospace firms, European and Russian space officials have joined forces to study human planetary missions, principally to land an international expedition on Mars later this century.
The U.S.-funded work is quietly underway through the International Science and Technology Center (ISTC). The ISTC in an intergovernmental group created in 1992 by an agreement between the European Union, Japan, the Russian Federation, and the United States. ISTC is headquartered in Moscow.
Nearly a half-billion dollars has been spent to date by ISTC, the funding throughput for a multi-country campaign to corral and convince Russian and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) scientists and engineers to redirect their talent toward peaceful and non-proliferation activities.
ISTC money has supported nearly 1,500 projects that range from nuclear waste containment, anthrax vaccines, and earthquake detection, to fending off space debris, designing better moon rovers and strategizing human treks to Mars.
Tagged simply as Project 2120 (a number is given to each work package), some $700,000 has been earmarked to look at the key technical means for human planetary missions. The effort is a spin-off from an earlier ISTC undertaking, Project 1172. That study ran from 1998 to 2000, resulting in a 13-volume study that blueprinted how best to send an expedition to the red planet.
Details of the ISTC space work were highlighted here during the 2002 Space and Robotics Conferences, sponsored by the Aerospace Division of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
Small sumslots of work
ISTC's agenda of space projects was outlined by Andrew Aldrin, senior specialist for Boeing in human space flight & exploration. He cited ISTC-supported research into human-carrying nuclear propulsion vehicles, space biomedical issues, as well as Mars rovers and landers.
"Let's face it. There isn't a whole lot of money out there to fund these areas," Aldrin said. "We're trying to build and maintain a group of people that are doing somethinganything on human exploration," he said.
Out of ISTC's overall budget, roughly 5 percent has been allocated for "space, aircraft and surface transportation."
"We'd like to see that share increase," Aldrin said. Small sums of money can buy significant amounts of work, he said.
As example, late last year, ISTC-approved a project on vegetable production as a component of a controlled ecological life support system. The United States is also footing the bill on developing shielding to protect spacecraft from meteoroid and space debris impacts. In both these projects, a NASA center is among the collaborators.
Aldrin said Project 2120 is being led by the Keldysh Research Center in Moscow. Supporting institutions include State Enterprise Krasnaya Zvezda, Institute of Biomedical Problems, and the RAS/Institute of Space Research. Collaborators on the study involve Boeing and its Rocketdyne Division. The European Space Agency is participating too, but in an "observing status" role at present, he said.
Critical lifeline
ISTC funds are a "critical lifeline" for numbers of Russian space research groups, Aldrin said. "Institutes in Russia aren't going to be around without this kind of support. Let's face it. If we are going to go to Mars, we need the intellectual historyand a lot of people in Russia have worked in this area," he said.
Aldrin said the earlier U.S. Department of State-funded Project 1172 scripted a human Mars trek. The two-year long study cost $350,000, creating a credible scenario that had a crew staying on the red planet for 34 days. Aspects of that assessment involved use of a new launcher, ultra-thin solar arrays, as well as nuclear propulsion and power hardware to help pull off a Mars sojourn. An estimated cost for the stopover on Mars was roughly $20 billion to $22 billion.
As follow-on, Project 2120 is slated to be a two-year undertaking. The same team that worked on Project 1172 is to do the job. Among items to be considered is a look at a megawatt-class power supply for electric rocket propulsion, a short-radius centrifuge, and ways to keep space travelers healthy via medical and biological technologies.
Broader scope
But the newer study is geared to looking at infrastructure development, not directed specifically at dispatching crews to Mars.
"It's broader in scope. The point is to build an infrastructure that on top of which you can build an exploration program," Aldrin told SPACE.com. "To do that, you've got to bring together the communities - the industrial communities, as well as the military," he said.
A conference in Moscow to help shape Project 2120 and expand Western involvement will be co-sponsored by ISTC and the Paris-based International Academy of Astronautics. The event is being eyed for September of this year, Aldrin said.
"More than anything, what we're trying to do is look across the landscape of Russian organizations involved in exploration. We want to build and hold onto some global teaming arrangements that, ultimately, when we do go to Mars, we can all work together," Aldrin said.
advertisement
