In an op-ed in Space News, Jean-Jacques Dordain and Michael Griffin suggest that when it’s time to retire the ISS, it should be moved to higher orbit, so that it may one day be made useful again, rather than incinerated. They write, “As lifelong space professionals who have worked together from different positions in ESA and NASA on the redesign, assembly and operation of the ISS, we fully share the objective to cease ISS operations at the end of the decade, but we believe that destroying it would be a pointless loss for the future.”
Full Story (Space News)
Tag: ISS Transition Plans
NASA Safety Panel Expresses Concerns About ISS Transition Plans
Space News reported that a “NASA safety panel expressed concerns about NASA’s plans to shift from the International Space Station to commercial successors, including funding for an ISS deorbit vehicle.” During its October 26 public meeting, NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel “issued a recommendation calling on NASA to provide a ‘comprehensive understanding’ of the requirements needed to transition from the ISS to commercial space stations, called commercial low Earth orbit (LEO) destinations, or CLDs, by the agency.” David West, a member of the panel, said, “NASA should develop a comprehensive understanding of the resources and timelines of the ISS-to-commercial-LEO transition plan to a much higher level of fidelity, to provide confidence that the nation will be able to sustain a continuous human presence in LEO.” West added that plan “should include ‘explicit defensible assumptions’ as well as specific metrics and deadlines for judging the progress by companies in developing a commercial business case for their stations ‘and is sufficient to support the development, production and operation of one or more commercial platforms to replace the ISS.’”
Full Story (Space News)