European Space Agency Should Pursue Upgrades for Automated Transfer Vehicle

This article from the BBC, written by science correspondent Jonathan Amos, makes for some interesting. The European Space Agency (ESA) will soon be faced with a decision over whether to pursue significant upgrades to their Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) program, or allow the program to run its course and end.

The ATV program has been highly successful thus far. The vehicle is designed to transfer large quantities of supplies and other cargo to the International Space Station, then serve as a disposal vehicle for waste generated by the crew, who fill the ATV up with the refuse and then dispatch the ATV to burn up in Earth's atmosphere. Most importantly, the vehicle operates only entirely by computer, being able to move towards the ISS and dock with it without any human guidance.

The first ATV, appropriately named the Jules Verne, was launched in the spring of 2008 and performed its mission successfully. A second ATV, with the equally appropriate name of Johannes Kepler, is scheduled for launch in the coming months. Several other ATV missions are in he works, with at least five more scheduled to serve the ISS between now and 2015.

The ESA is considered upgrading the ATV program so as to allow it to return cargo to the Earth by giving it the ability to reenter the Earth's atmosphere and land intact. Even more ambitious plans are being considered which would adapt the ATV into a vehicle capable of carrying a human crew. These plans are quite ambitious, though they would cost a considerable amount of money. As the ESA has only a fraction of the financial resources as NASA, and in light of the intense budget pressures currently facing European nations, this is not a decision that the ESA will make without long and perhaps heated debate.

Still, the ESA should pursue these plans, developing first an ATV which can survive reentry and thus return cargo to the Earth, and subsequently an ATV adapted for use by a human crew.

Manned spaceflight is going through some rough times. The Space Shuttle program of the United States is due to end next year, and President Obama has decided to terminate the Constellation program that was intended to create a successor manned spaceflight system, essentially turning over American manned spaceflight to private industry for the foreseeable future. By committing to the eventual creation of a European manned spaceflight capability, the ESA could give manned spaceflight a considerable boost.

More to the point, it's time for the ESA to step up to the plate of space exploration in a more serious manner. America's fiscal crisis is virtually guaranteed to curtail the American space program for the foreseeable future. The ESA has gradually emerged on the stage of unmanned space exploration in recent years, sending highly-successful missions to Mars and Venus and also contributing mightily to projects focused on cosmology, both on its own and in cooperation with other space agencies.

But manned spaceflight has remained a low priority for the ESA. All European astronauts have essentially been passengers on Russian or American missions. It's time for Europe to develop its own manned spaceflight capability, and adapting the ATV to serve as a manned space vehicle seems to be the most logical way in which it could do so. When it does, Europe will begin to recapture the exploratory spirit with which it once changed the world.