ESA’s Utilisation Accomplishments and Planning for ISS
- Paper number
IAC-06-B4.3.02
- Author
Dr. Martin Zell, European Space Agency (ESA)/ESTEC, The Netherlands
- Coauthor
Mr. Marc Heppener, European Space Agency (ESA)/ESTEC, The Netherlands
- Coauthor
Mr. Aldo Petrivelli, European Space Agency (ESA)/ESTEC, The Netherlands
- Year
2006
- Abstract
The European utilisation programme in life and physical sciences has evolved substantially in terms of science community and scope. A variety of ISS experiments have been already accomplished and a broad range of fundamental science and application oriented research is under implementation for execution on ISS. European countries have initiated several Soyuz visiting flight opportunities with European astronauts to ISS to implement dedicated sets of scientific, technological, commercial, educational and PR activities. Recently increasing experimental packages have been also been pursued with the support of NASA and Russian ISS increment crews. This approach will be further pursued in the next ISS mission increments leading to the European ISS routine operations when ESA’s Columbus laboratory including the multi-user research facilities will be deployed on ISS with flight 1E. ESA has initiated a first ISS increment mission commencing with the launch of a European astronaut onboard of STS-121 as a member of the permanent crew to ISS. This re-installs since spring 2003 for the first time again a permanent 3-crew onboard ISS which allows for a substantial enhancement of system and utilisation activities. The latest level of achievements indicate a promising long-term European utilisation perspective on ISS where a substantial science return will justify the investments and will further foster international cooperation in space.
- Abstract document