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.’”
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Tag: NASA Safety Panel
NASA Faces Possibility of Short-Term Gap in Human Space Station Missions
Space News reported, “While NASA seeks to maintain an uninterrupted human presence in low Earth orbit, an agency official said a short-term gap between the International Space Station and commercial successors would not be ‘the end of the world.’” The space agency’s “current approach to its future in LEO counts on supporting development of commercial space stations with the goal of having at least one such station ready to support NASA astronauts and research by 2030, when the ISS is scheduled for retirement.” However, “a key question” is “whether any of the several companies working on such concepts will be ready by the end of the decade.
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