European Space Agency | 2011 July 27
For more than a decade, the International Space Station has been a busy orbiting research lab. But it could soon take on a new role as a testbed for ambitious missions deeper into space.
Future ventures could include Mars missions, lunar habitats or travelling to an asteroid – all needing new technologies and techniques that could be tested on the Station.
Following yesterday's meeting of the orbital outpost's Multilateral Coordination Board, member agencies expect to begin identifying specific technology initiatives based on sample exploration missions.
The Board meets periodically to coordinate Station activities, with senior representatives from ESA, NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, Russia's Roscosmos and Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.
The meeting also discussed standardising space systems, including the revised International Docking Systems Standard, as well as the Board's effort to gather information on how successfully the Station has been used, the results of which will be published in September.
ESA use of Station
Exploitation of the Station's research facilities is already well under way.
ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli performed more than 30 experiments during his six-month MagISStra mission, which ended with his return to Earth in May.
Another European 'passenger' – the life-size Matroshka mannequin – ended its latest tour of duty in March, after a year monitoring radiation inside Japan's Kibo module. Paolo removed internal dosimeters from Matroshka for return to Earth.
Other European experiments have been retrieved from outside of the Station. The Expose-R package hosted nine biological samples, including plant seeds and bacterial spores, to study the effects of two years of direct space exposure.
Another space exposure experiment involved fungi known for damaging spacecraft materials. Russia's Mir station was particularly afflicted by fungal growth.
ESA experiments on a variety of crew members are providing new insights into the effects of weightlessness on our balance and how we perceive motion and tilt.
Physical processes are also being probed: the last Shuttle mission recently delivered new samples for a furnace in ESA's Columbus module to investigate rapid solidification of molten metals in weightlessness.
A Station for science
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer is a partnership of hundreds of scientists and 16 countries, designed by CERN and tested at ESA's ESTEC technical centre. It has already collected more than two billion observations of galactic cosmic rays since in May 2011.
NASA has designated the Station's US segment as a national laboratory to encourage its use by national agencies, private firms and universities.
The Canadian Space Agency and NASA will test robotic refuelling systems delivered to the Station by the last Shuttle.
Roscosmos is investigating wheat and vegetable cultivation and human adaptation to long flights.
The Station is being used as a platform for observing Earth, while Japan's X-ray camera is looking in the other direction for cosmic objects such as black holes and neutron stars.
Space Station to Be Sunk After 2020
Discovery News | AFP | 2011 July 27
Russia and its partners plan to plunge the International Space Station (ISS) into the ocean at the end of its life cycle after 2020 so as not to leave space junk, the space agency said on Wednesday.
"After it completes its existence, we will be forced to sink the ISS. It cannot be left in orbit, it's too complex, too heavy an object, it can leave behind lots of rubbish," said deputy head of Roskosmos space agency Vitaly Davydov.
"Right now we've agreed with our partners that the station will be used until approximately 2020," he said in comments released on Wednesday.
A piece of space debris narrowly missed the space station last month in a rare incident that forced the six-member crew to scramble to their rescue craft.
The ISS, which orbits 220 miles above Earth, is a sophisticated platform for scientific experiments bringing together space agencies from Russia, the United States, Europe, Japan, and Canada.
Launched in 1998, the ISS was initially expected to remain in space for 15 years until an agreement was reached to keep it operating through 2020.
By going into a watery grave, the ISS will repeat the fate of its predecessor space station Mir which Russia sank in the Pacific Ocean in 2001 after 15 years of service.
Moscow this month proclaimed the beginning of "the era of the Soyuz" after the U.S. shuttle's last flight left the Russian system as the sole means for delivering astronauts to the ISS.
Russia is currently developing a new space ship to replace the Soyuz capsule which is single-use, except for the section in which spacemen return to Earth, said Davydov.
Tests of the ship will begin after 2015 and it will have "elements of multi-use whose level will be much higher than they are today," he said, adding that Russia will compete with the United States in building the new-generation ship.
"We'll race each other."
Davydov said it remains unclear what will come after the ISS and whether mankind will see the need for a replacement orbiting close to Earth.
"Lots of our tasks are still linked to circumterrestrial space," he said, while adding that a new space station could be used as a base for building complexes that will explore deeper into space.
"I cannot rule out that it will be used to put together, create the complexes that in the future will fly to the Moon and Mars," he said, stressing that "a serious exploration" could not be done without manned flights.
NASA Considers New Uses for $100 Billion Space Station
Space.com | 2011 July 27
NASA and its international partners are discussing new options for the International Space Station, including innovative ways to use the $100 billion orbiting laboratory as a testing ground for technologies to help future deep space exploration.
The space station's Multilateral Coordination Board, which is made up of representatives from the space agencies that built the orbiting lab, examined potential technology initiatives that could support voyages to an asteroid or Mars, or could be used in the development of lunar habitats.
The coordination board discussed those options in a meeting yesterday (July 26) and also reviewed plans to ramp up use of the station now that its 13-year construction is complete. The officials also evaluated efforts to standardize systems and operations at the outpost, including plans for a standard spaceship docking system. [Photos: Building the International Space Station]
The station's Multilateral Coordination Board includes senior representatives from NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, the European Space Agency, the Russian Federal Space Agency, and the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. The board meets periodically to ensure coordination of station operations and activities among the partners.
Currently, NASA and its international partners plan to continue operating the space station through at least 2020. [Infographic: The International Space Station Inside and Out]
Scientific and technological research is an ongoing part of life aboard the space station. Here are some examples of the work that has been done, and is continuing to be done, at the orbiting laboratory:
- Using the International Space Station as a national laboratory is expanding. Memorandums of understanding are in place between NASA and other U.S. government agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health, which is now in its second year of selecting experiments for research in microgravity related to human health.
Space Act Agreements also allow private firms and universities to conduct research in areas like vaccine development, gene differentiation, plant studies and advanced propulsion technologies.
Earlier this month, NASA formally selected the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, a nonprofit organization, to stimulate, develop and manage uses of the station by organizations other than NASA on the American segment of the outpost.
- The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which was delivered and installed on the station by a visiting space shuttle crew in May, has already collected more than 2 billion observations of galactic cosmic rays. The astrophysics instrument represents a partnership of hundreds of scientists from sixteen countries, led by Nobel laureate Samuel Ting.
- Robotic technologies developed by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) for the station have been used to improve the dexterity of surgeons on Earth in fine scale surgery. In the coming months, NASA will be testing a humanoid robot assistant, called Robonaut 2, that was developed in partnership with General Motors. Furthermore, an experiment to test the ability to robotically refuel satellites in orbit was launched earlier this month onboard the final space shuttle flight – Atlantis' STS-135 mission.
- The space station partnership is working to share data from remote sensing instruments mounted on the orbiting outpost and to increase the application of such data for use in disaster response. For example, the Hyperspectral Imager for the Coastal Ocean has collected more than 3,510 images, providing unprecedented spectral resolution of difficult-to-map coastal waters. The International Space Station Agricultural Camera snapped its first pictures on June 10. Its data is used to assess crop health and rapid changes during the growing season.
- NASA's studies of their astronauts' health during long duration stays on the station have identified relationships between diet and bone loss that offer important insights for ongoing and future research.
Recently published data on chemical changes in pharmaceuticals identified that low-dose ionizing radiation in orbit degrades many medications, indicating the need to develop more space-hardy medications for future human spaceflight beyond low-Earth orbit.
- The Russian Federal Space Agency, or Roscosmos, continues experiments aimed at human adaptation to future long-duration expeditions. Effects of the flight conditions on the cardiovascular system, the respiratory system and bones are being investigated in a series of dedicated medical experiments. Wheat and vegetables are being planted, followed by genetic, microbiological and biochemical tests of the plant. Four different long-duration Russian astrobiology experiments were also returned after spending two years exposed to the environment of space.
- In addition to astronomical and Earth observations, Japan promotes biotechnological research by analyzing structures of high-quality protein crystals grown on the station that have led to treatments for muscular dystrophy. Japan also continues experiments related to future long-term human spaceflight missions, such as investigating bone loss, the effects of radiation and countermeasures of those. Scientists have also gained insight into fields of fundamental life and materials science from research conducted in the Japanese Kibo laboratory.
- Educational activities on the station reach thousands of students around the world. In May and June, hundreds of thousands of students watched the adaptation of spiders to a space environment and compared their behavior to spiders in classrooms on Earth through the website BioEdOnline.org. The spiders returned to Earth on the shuttle Atlantis when it landed for the final time on July 21.
Construction of the International Space Station began in 1998, with five space agencies representing the 15 countries that designed and built the orbiting lab. The station's backbone-like main truss is as long as a football field, making it the largest spacecraft ever built. The orbital complex consists of 13 rooms and is typically home to a six-person crew.
With NASA's space shuttle fleet retired, the U.S. space agency plans to rely on its international partners to deliver crews and cargo to the space station until new privately built spaceships become available.
Russian Soyuz spacecraft have routinely ferried astronauts and cosmonauts to and from the space station since 2001, when the first crew took up residence. Unmanned robot cargo ships from Russia, Japan and Europe also make regular delivery flights to the orbiting lab.
NASA has contracts with two private spaceship builders, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Orbital Sciences Corp., to build and launch robot cargo ships to ferry U.S. supplies to the space station. The first of those flights could occur by December of this year, NASA officials have said.
If they have a longer than usual stay they will need to have planned maintenance in place for things that could go wrong. 
