“[To] pioneer the future in space, exploration, scientific discovery, and aeronautics research…for the benefit for all.” – an excerpt from NASA’s mission statement and motto. NASA is nearing the end of the shuttle program and gets even closer preparing future missions for the Constellations program.
You’ve heard it; the Shuttle program is officially retiring at the end of 2010, perhaps sooner. After 28 years, the program is coming to an end, and in its wake a new program for deeper exploration came to replace it. But what program is this? The Constellation program.
Proposed in 2004, the Constellation program, or CxP for short, plans on replacing the space shuttles with spacecrafts and booster vehicles. One of the boosters will be in charge of launching mission crews into orbit, the other would be responsible for launching hardware that are too heavy for the first booster; these are Ares 1 and Ares 5. Both have already been started and are in production. In addition to the boosters, a spacecraft is being designed that will require the Orion crew, the Earth Departure Stage, and the Altair lunar landing.
But the question is, is it worth it? At first, it seemed that the Obama administration didn’t think so. Despite Obama’s original promise to Florida to keep Americans first in space and close the ‘space gap’, Obama was determined to cut off the program from the 2011 budget proposal which would inevitably shut down the program entirely, creating more job losses and giving those shuttle-jobs to the Russians, while successfully wasting millions of dollars. However, as the amount of disagreeing citizens increased, Obama changed his proposal from providing nothing to increasing NASA’s budget to $6 billion, at least for the next five years, to help fund the plan.
But that’s for the future; currently the Atlantis has delivered an integrated Cargo Carrier and a Russian-built mini research module to the International Space Station. The commander of this mission is Kenneth T. Ham, a previous air wing strike leader for two deployments to the Mediterranean Sea and combat missions over North Iraq and Bosnia. Pilot is Dominic A. Antonelli while Michael T. Good, Garrett E. Reisman, Piers J. Sellers and Stephen G. Brown all serve as mission specialists.
NASA’s next planned shuttle mission is the STS-133, where Discovery will go to the International Space Station to deliver Express Logistics Carrier 4 and critical spare components. The shuttle is scheduled to take off on September 16, 2010. Following, the Endeavour plans to also launch on November 2010 for its STS-134 mission.