TIM FURNISS / LONDON
NASA fears that expenditure will rise further when true scope of work is revealed
It will cost a further $280 million by the end of 2004 to carry out all the safety recommendations made by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, NASA says. But the US space agency is concerned the costs will rise significantly as the true scope of the work becomes apparent.
NASA says it has not yet fully worked out how to develop a tile repair kit, for example, which is likely to cost an additional $57million. Of the $280 million identified, $235 million will be spenton alterations to the launch system and $45 million on establishing NASA's new engineering and safety centre.
Earlier, NASA allocated $65 million to modify the design of the Shuttle external tank to help prevent the build-up of ice and $40 million for a camera system to monitor the launch from as many angles as possible, through to orbital insertion.
These expenditures come as NASA is considering retiring the Shuttle as a crewed vehicle in 2010, although it may continue operating the fleet as unmanned cargo carriers, while relying on the Orbital Space Plane (OSP), meanwhile, to continue manned operations to the International Space Station (ISS). The OSP is increasingly likely to be a simple ballistic capsule.
Although the orbiters would be used initially as cargo carriers, NASA may opt for the original unmanned Cargo Shuttle design that was promoted in the 1990s. A new heavylift cargo booster is also being considered for the ISS, to support an eventual manned mission to Mars.
The ninth ISS expedition crew, to be launched aboard a Soyuz TMA by Soyuz booster from Baikonur in April 2004, willcomprise NASA astronaut Bill McArthur as commander and flight engineer Russian Valery Tokarev. They will fly to the ISS with European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers, who will return with the crew now on board the ISS, Michael Foale and Alexander Kaleri. The likely 10th crew, to be launched in late 2004 or early 2005, will be made up of NASA's Leroy Chiao and Russia's Salizhan Sharipov. NASA plans to launch one more Space Shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope in 2006 and expects the telescope to operate until 2012 when it will be deliberately de-orbited, rather than be recovered and brought back to Earth aboard a Space Shuttle.The agency has designed an autonomous space tug to be launched by Delta II to end the career of the 11,000kg (24,230lb) Hubble, which was put into orbit in 1990. The $300 million tug would use techno-logies to be demonstrated under the already planned DART and Orbital Express autonomous rendezvous missions.
Source: Flight International
