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Hello,
I was wondering, what are the goals of the European space program? From what I gather, the ESA concentrates on unmanned exploration and would send astronauts aboard either the U.S. Space Shuttle or the Russian Soyuz, when a manned mission is required. I don't know much of the European space programs and I was curious.
Cordially,
EarthWolf
" Man will not always stay on the Earth. "
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
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Hi, EarthWolf.
Currently, ESA has no manned vehicules, and that will be so for the forseeable future. The German subdivision of ESA is working on something like a rocketplane, but that's still waaay into the future cq completion, they're doing droptests with a unpowered subscale thiing.
Instead, ESA goes the bartering-way: they build stuff or offer other things to nasa (like the pressurized cargoes) and in place they get a ride on the Shuttle (if it flies)
Or they pay the Russians to go up.
ESA has nowhere the money like NASA, so their projects are more small scale, but they do have a program for going to Mars, manned: Aurora. It's slow, with a lot of unmanned landers in the initial stages etc. and of course it could get scrapped, sometime in the future...
Also, ESA has now an agreement with Russia to let them build a launchpad for their Soyuzes on French-Guyana, wich is very interesting for both parties: close to the equator, so more payload capab. for the russians, and another launcher for ESA, giving them more flexibility in their missions. In the future they'll probably do manned launches from there.
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They haven't been up to much very big, it's kind of small and doesn't do a whole lot like NASA did, but they are getting much better and have some good projects lately. In the past they did Giotto and IUE which looked at the ultraviolet radiation, but now they have grow and are involved with the NASA Cassini-Huygens putting in 1 billion euro, they had Mars Express launched which found water and they work now together with other people getting together with Russia, launching things from China and doing projects with NASA I think they plan on doing other stuff like the JWST which is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, LISA Pathfinder and the have projects for some exo planet hunting missions which projects like these might find extra solar planets like Earth in missions like Eddington, Gaia and others. The ESa might continue to be small doing their own thing because they lack the experience of Russia and NASA. They depend on other space agenices to get their people into space, but I think NASA should tell the ESA to develop a manned program as it's important to have parterns that can help this way and NASA is in trouble with safety so it would be good if the ESA chould chip in with this. The ESA is still small so won't have the experience or budget that other have.
'first steps are not for cheap, think about it...
did China build a great Wall in a day ?' ( Y L R newmars forum member )
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Esa will take over from the Russians in the supplying of the international space station.
Esa is currently planning its next moves it does have plans to send people to the Moon and Mars under the Aurora program. Actually they seem to want to use a Hab similar to mars direct type facilities. They are planning to have people in space soon under there pheonix program, manned launchers.
Esa at the moment is using its arianne 5 and Vega program to dominate the satellite launching programs. It has started a plan to create a larger launcher to replace the arianne 5 but it will be many years before it will be ready.
Esa till then is simply doing basic steps, successful purposeful missions. It will increase its friendship with the Russians and steadily increase its prescence in space.
Chan eil mi aig a bheil ùidh ann an gleidheadh an status quo; Tha mi airson cur às e.
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I understand the ATV will be pressurized. It can't be to far from supporting crews, at least on the way up.
"Yes, I was going to give this astronaut selection my best shot, I was determined when the NASA proctologist looked up my ass, he would see pipes so dazzling he would ask the nurse to get his sunglasses."
---Shuttle Astronaut Mike Mullane
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True, about the pressurization but ESA has repeatedly said they will never launch it manned. Probably because Ariane is not man-rated to start with...
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Hello,
I've heard about the Aurora program. Does anyone know what the mission plan for that one is? I'll try to dig up something on it online.
Cordially,
EarthWolf
" Man will not always stay on the Earth. "
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
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http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Aurora/]The Aurora program
It's not set in stone. The ask for papers, ideas, come together, deide wich are the best ideas, and work on them for some time.
Then some years later they repeat the process.
Everyone is invited to do proposals, from small industry (for sub-systems, or designs of new suits etc...) to big corporations (like EADS, who builds the Ariane)
It's not only European, Canada is in the program, and (not sure) probably Russia too.
Ultimate goal: Manned landing on Mars around 2030 ("if all goes well," as they so charmingly admit.)
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