With Europe's first Automated
Transfer Vehicle (ATV) due to deliver supplies to the International Space Station
this fall, NASA has begun training U.S. civil servants to help trouble-shoot if
needed during what is supposed to be a largely Russian-European operation.
Ordinarily, those problem-solving duties would fall primarily on NASA's contractors. But U.S.
export controls governing the exchange of technical data have complicated
matters for NASA and its partners as they prepare for ATV's
debut.
NASA asked the U.S. State Department
in December for some space station-specific relief from U.S. International
Traffic in Arms regulations that govern many
space-related products and services.
William Gerstenmaier, NASA's
associate administrator for space operations, reported some progress on that
front, but said the agency is still moving ahead
what it described several months ago as a feasible workaround -- relying
more heavily on civil-servant flight controllers who, under existing export
rules, can interact more freely with
their non-U.S. counterparts.
"We are actually training civil
servants as a workaround," Gerstenmaier said following a May 17 presentation
here before the Washington Space Business Roundtable. "It's not truly training
unique civil servants, but we are utilizing civil servants more than we would
have ... if we had some of these restrictions removed."
Gerstenmaier's presentation focused
on the rationale for space exploration and the role the International Space Station is playing in
helping the United States meet more outward-bound exploration goals. During a
question and answer session, the spaceflight chief was asked by the
audience how export restrictions were impacting NASA's interactions with
its space station partners.
He said the restrictions have grown
more cumbersome since NASA and its many partners signed on to build the space
station in the early 1990s.
"On space station, we tried to fix
some of that at the beginning," he said. "We got some ability to exchange data
back and forth. But now it's kind of crept back the other way. It's getting
restricted a little bit."
Gerstenmaier said he understands the
need for export control policies designed to help the United States
maintain a competitive advantage in militarily useful technologies. But in some cases, he said, the
rules prevent discussions about technologies that
are "not all that big."
On occasion, Gerstenmaier said, the
rules cause "problems between us and our
international partners that are really more of a problem than the benefit we
are gaining by having the ... restrictions in there," he said.
The upcoming flight of ATV has put
the issue into stark relief.
"One of the things that's tough
that's coming up is the Automated
Transfer Vehicle that's getting ready to fly to space station this fall,"
he said. "We have to be careful with how we exchange data with our partners on
that, and that becomes somewhat of a problem especially as we are doing
real-time operations. If a problem occurs on ATV, [it affects] how openly we
can share data back and forth."
Gerstenmaier said NASA has been talking to the State
Department about the issue, and mentioned that the U.S. Defense Department has
some exemptions that might be a good model for the relief NASA is seeking.
"We have been talking to some folks
at State about some things and we will see if we can do some things there. [The Defense
Department] has some ability to do some things differently than NASA does. We
will see if it makes sense."
Gerstenmaier made clear that any relief NASA
might be granted would be limited in scope.
"It's harder than it needs to be and
we will see if we can get some of that stuff changed," Gerstenmaier said. "I
don't think we will get big changes, but it will remove some of those specific
things and make our lives easier."
Meanwhile, preparations for the
space shuttle's scheduled
June 8 liftoff are progressing smoothly, according to Gerstenmaier. Space
shuttle Atlantis and a crew of six are due to deliver a new truss segment and
additional solar arrays to the space station.
The mission, the first of the year, has
been delayed since a severe thunderstorm in late February pelted the
shuttle with golf-ball-sized hail, damaging the insulating foam on its external fuel tank. All told, there
were some 4,000 individual areas requiring repair, Gerstenmaier
said. That contrasts with 500 hail divots requiring repair after space shuttle
Discovery was caught in a thunderstorm while waiting to make its May 1999
flight to conduct the first docking to the then-fledgling International Space Station.
