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Washington (AFP)
In the first routine flight in a series that NASA hopes to extend, SpaceX will launch four astronauts from the United States to the International Space Station on Sunday, a mission that certifies the loss of Russia’s nine-year monopoly of access to space.
Three Americans, Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, as well as Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, will take off on Sunday at 7:27 pm local time. [00h27 GMT del lunes] from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The crew will arrive at their destination on the International Space Station (ISS) around 04:00 GMT on Tuesday, joining the two Russian and one American astronauts on board, and will remain there for six months.
This “operational” flight continues the successful demonstration mission carried out from May to August, in which two American astronauts were flown to the ISS and then flown safely to Earth by SpaceX.
US Vice President Mike Pence will attend the launch in person.
SpaceX’s Dragon capsule is the second device currently capable of reaching the ISS, along with the highly trusted Russian Soyouz, who has brought all visitors to the station since 2011, after the US stopped its manned flights nine years ago. . years. A second shuttle, built by Boeing, could be operational in a year.
NASA hopes, however, to continue cooperating with Russia. To do this, he has proposed to provide seats for his cosmonauts on future missions and intends that Americans continue to use the Soyouz regularly.
But the negotiations drag on. “We want a seat swap,” NASA chief Jim Bridenstine said at a news conference Friday. “Talks are ongoing,” he said, just as he has been doing for months.
– Budget without closing –
The reality is that ties between Washington and Moscow in the space arena, one of the few areas where they have remained good, are weakening. After more than 20 years of cooperation for the ISS, Russia will not participate in NASA’s next mini-station around the Moon, the Gateway.
The head of the Russian space agency Roskosmos, Dmitri Rogozine, was ironic in 2014 about the need for the United States to use a “springboard” to reach the ISS. And Elon Musk, the controversial head of SpaceX, did not forget the provocation and replied in May: “The springboard works.”
SpaceX has become the black beast of Rogozine. In addition to becoming NASA’s favorite airline, Musk’s company is also a leader in the market for private satellite launches, eventually forcing Russia to revise its old space program.
This summer, Roskosmos announced a plan to build a new reusable rocket, “not semi-reusable like SpaceX”, Rogozine wanted to point out. “Our engineers … don’t want to repeat what their SpaceX colleagues do, but to outdo them.”
But the simple fact that Roskosmos is compared to a private company serves to illustrate the new era the world has entered since the 2010s: space is no longer the monopoly of states.
The US strategy, intensified during Donald Trump’s tenure, was to privatize access to Earth’s surroundings, boosting the business of companies like SpaceX and Boeing with millions of dollars in contracts to become service providers for NASA. and for any private person or company.
“The ultimate goal is to have more means to do things for which there is no private market yet, such as going to the Moon and Mars,” Bridenstine repeated on Friday.
But political change in Washington is a complex time for the space agenda, which has yet to receive from Congress the tens of billions of dollars needed to end the Artemis program on the moon in 2024.
Bridenstine has announced that she will step down from her post to allow President-elect Joe Biden to set his own space goals. To date, the Democrat has not yet referred to the date of 2024 to walk on the Moon again.
© 2020 AFP
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