WASHINGTON — 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.
At its Oct. 26 public meeting, NASA’s the 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.
“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,” David West, a member of the panel, said.
That plan, he added, 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.”
The recommendation, he said, is rooted in concerns by the panel in the schedule for developing commercial space stations. NASA expects one or more such stations to be in service by the late 2020s to enable a smooth handover from the ISS, currently set to be retired in 2030.
“NASA’s current plan for transitioning from ISS to one or more commercial destinations features a high-level framework and a timeline that is very tight,” West said. The panel is concerned there is not a “clear, robust business case” for commercial stations, he said, “creating programmatic and safety risks with the entire plan for NASA LEO.”
NASA is currently funding design work by two teams on commercial space stations, one led by Blue Origin and Sierra Space and the other by Voyager Space. A third…
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