WASHINGTON — A NASA safety panel expressed concerns about NASA’s plans to shift from the International Space Station to industrial successors, including funding for an ISS deorbit vehicle.
At its Oct. 26 public meeting, NASA’s the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel issued a suggestion calling on NASA to offer a “comprehensive understanding” of the necessities needed to transition from the ISS to industrial space stations, called industrial 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 offer confidence that the nation will have the ability 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” in addition to specific metrics and deadlines for judging the progress by corporations in developing a industrial business case for his or her stations “and is sufficient to support the event, production and operation of a number of industrial platforms to interchange the ISS.”
The suggestion, he said, is rooted in concerns by the panel within the schedule for developing industrial space stations. NASA expects a number of 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 at least one or more industrial destinations incorporates a high-level framework and a timeline that may be very tight,” West said. The panel is anxious there isn’t a “clear, robust business case” for industrial stations, he said, “creating programmatic and safety risks with your entire plan for NASA LEO.”
NASA is currently funding design work by two teams on industrial space stations, one led by Blue Origin and Sierra Space and the opposite by Voyager Space. A 3rd company, Northrop Grumman, announced Oct. 4 it was terminating its NASA agreement and would join forces with Voyager Space on its project. NASA is individually supporting work by Axiom Space to develop industrial modules that shall be installed on the ISS and later separate to form a industrial station.
That work has included a request for information issued by NASA Oct. 2, searching for feedback from corporations about its requirements for human-rating industrial stations to be used by NASA crews. That request for information is open to other corporations proposing industrial space stations but not yet supported by NASA.
“For us to achieve success, it’s essential for us to work together,” Angela Hart, NASA CLD program manager, said during a panel discussion about those requirements at AIAA’s ASCEND conference Oct. 24.
The necessities NASA is searching for feedback on are a “first draft” focused on safety, with later drafts including utilization and operations requirements. “We’re trying to industry to step up, to work together, come back to NASA with how we expect this will work,” she said.
Industry officials on the panel said they’d no major concerns about those draft requirements. “The NASA safety requirements are clearly there for a reason, they’re well earned,” said Randy Lillard, Blue Origin program manager for the Orbital Reef industrial space station. The problem, he said, shall be how corporations can reveal to NASA they will meet those requirements. “There’s multiple strategy to show or prove that you simply’ve met a requirement.”
While the panel’s focus was on NASA requirements, industry panelists did discuss a few of the other challenges they face in developing industrial stations that may serve NASA and other customers. Eric Stallmer, executive vp of presidency relations and public policy at Voyager Space, mentioned the shortage of an equivalent of the ISS’s intergovernmental agreement that creates export control challenges with other ISS partners. “How can we streamline these issues now so it’s not going to be an issue down the road?”
Janet Kavandi, president and chief science officer of Sierra Space, said one issue is working with various nations, particularly in Europe where they traditionally undergo the European Space Agency for using the ISS but don’t necessarily should so as to access a industrial station. “There’s a bit of little bit of fear” about that recent way of doing business, she said of those governments.
“NASA recognizes a few of those challenges,” Hart said, noting she had a “worry list” of policy issues to handle over the following 12 months. “We have now quite a lot of challenges and opportunities to actually change the strategy to do business.”
Budget concerns
Considered one of the largest challenges is the NASA funding available to support CLD development. Some in industry say privately they’re fearful about potential budget cuts, or a minimum of slower growth, within the CLD program in the following two years. That’s linked to a budget deal in June that caps non-defense discretionary spending at 2023 levels for 2024 with a 1% increase in 2025.
NASA sought a 7% increase in its overall budget for 2024 but has acknowledged that it’s unlikely to get that increase, with a flat budget one in all the more optimistic potential outcomes. That might lead to cuts to programs like CLD, which in turn may find yourself stretching out this system and decreasing the probabilities that a minimum of one station shall be ready by the top of the last decade.
Those budget concerns also affect NASA’s work procuring a vehicle to deorbit the ISS. NASA issued a request for proposals in September for the US Deorbit Vehicle (USDV), which is able to handle the controlled reentry of the station into the South Pacific at the top of its life. NASA is requesting $180 million for the USDV in 2024 and projects the project to cost nearly $1 billion over its life.
On the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel meeting, West said it was critical for USDV to stay on schedule. The present timeline for developing the vehicle, requiring it to be ready in 2029, is “difficult enough,” he said, but “a more serious challenge at this point concerns uncertainty over how the USDV shall be funded.”
“The panel feels strongly and can proceed to emphasise that funding the deorbit vehicle isn’t optional and it can’t be delayed,” he said. “It should be adequately funded in a timely fashion to offer the means for safely disposing of the ISS.”
Patricia Sanders, chair of the panel, emphasized that time at the top of the general public meeting. “The day will inevitably come when the station is at its end of life and we may not have the ability to dictate that date,” she said. “This must be resourced, and resourced now, if we’re to avert a catastrophe.”
She also acknowledged the potential budget shortfalls the agency is facing. “NASA has a really full mission plate. To the extent that their budget request isn’t fully funded, the leadership might want to make critical decisions. Either program content or schedules will should be adjusted to fulfill fiscal realities. Not doing so, that’s, attempting to do all planned work on expected timelines, will introduce unacceptable risk.”