Expansionary Institute

Forum Admin
futurist3000@aol.com

March 25, 2003

The European Space Agency will send an unmanned mission to Mars in 2009 to put a roving vehicle on the planet to search for evidence of life, the agency said Tuesday.

The ESA hopes the mission, known as ExoMars, also will provide new insight into the planet's surface and atmosphere. The trip is part of ESA's preparation for eventual manned missions to Mars.

The agency, headquartered in Paris, also has asked scientists to suggest ways to improve the project.

"I very much hope that, as in the past, we can count on a strong contribution from the scientific community," ExoMars scientist Jorge Vago said.

The current mission plan will use a solar-powered vehicle to drill holes into the Martian surface and take soil samples from sites where scientists believe primitive life forms may have existed

NASATo Keep Shuttles Flying Until 2022
March 24 (Reuters) - Even as the fatal mid-air break-up of shuttle Columbia is being investigated, NASA said on Monday it is exploring ways to keep the remaining three space shuttles flying until 2022.

The U.S. space agency's long-term plans call for the shuttle fleet to be active at least until a "next-generation launch technology" -- which is in the earliest stages -- makes its first flight some 12 years from now.

In one scenario, shuttles would continue to work to extend the life of the International Space Station until 2022 and beyond, said Michael Kostelnik, who heads the space station and shuttle programs at NASA.

"We will lay out an alternative future that has a lot of things we should do ... to make sure we do the right things to keep the three remaining shuttles that we have safe and reliable and meeting the mission as we understand it," Kostelnik said at a briefing.

Kostelnik and other NASA officials had just considered this topic at a conference last week in New Orleans aimed at extending the shuttle fleet's life span.

Organized months before Columbia's Feb. 1 disintegration over Texas, the conference honored the seven astronauts killed in the accident, and Kostelnik said that the independent investigation into the tragedy would have some impact on long-term plans for the shuttle program.

LEARNING FROM COLUMBIA TRAGEDY

"We will learn a lot from the Gehman board," he said, referring to the board headed by Harold Gehman that is probing the Columbia accident.

The board has so far reached no conclusions about what caused the shuttle to fall apart at high altitude as it headed for Cape Canaveral. But last week, search teams recovered the spacecraft's data recorder, which stores sensor information about temperature, aerodynamic pressure, vibrations and other data, which may yield more clues to what went wrong.

Depending on the findings of the Gehman board, Kostelnik said the shuttle fleet is likely to look about the same as it does now when it resumes its flight schedule. Kostelnik is also heading NASA's plans to return the shuttles to flight, possibly as early as this fall.

"If the fleet continues to support the International Space Station, it probably will not look appreciably different in the near term," he said. "When we get the inputs from the (Gehman) board on what the cause is, that could really be reversed."

Acknowledging the possibility, however slight, that the shuttles might not fly again, Kostelnik also envisioned design changes that would allow an ailing shuttle to be inspected during a mission.

One scenario would be to make the orbiting space station a place where astronauts could inspect shuttles during space walks, Kostelnik said; another might be to allow shuttle astronauts to get outside the spaceship while in flight to check for problems, he said.

"Perhaps even flying a robotic shuttle in the out-years would not be out of the question," he said.


 
03/24/03 16:05 ET

www.prnewswire.com