Boeing, SpaceX seek to end ISS reliance on Russia

James Dean | Florida Today

Show Caption Hide Caption Russians lose control of ISS cargo craft Russian flight controllers are continuing to troubleshoot issues with the ISS Progress 59 cargo craft that was launched at 3:09 a.m. EDT (1:09 p.m.local time in Baikonur) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

CAPE CANAVERAL — A failed resupply mission this week has again highlighted the International Space Station reliance on a single Russian spacecraft to fly astronauts up and down from orbit.

If problems forced an extended grounding of Russia's Soyuz crew vehicle, which shares some common systems with the robotic Progress cargo freighter lost in orbit after its launch Tuesday, no other ride would be available in the near term. In a worst-case scenario, the station might have to be abandoned.

But if schedules stay on track, two new U.S. spacecraft could be ready to launch astronauts from the Space Coast in two or three years, resuming human launches from U.S. soil that ended with NASA's retirement of the space shuttle program in 2011.

"If you look at it as a global effort, we need to have a redundant way to get humans back and forth from space," said Chris Ferguson, a former shuttle astronaut who is now director of crew and mission systems for Boeing's commercial crew program. "What you see here today, it goes a long way to making that happen."

Ferguson spoke Thursday at the 43rd Space Congress in Cape Canaveral on a panel that discussed the return of human spaceflight to the Space Coast.

Boeing and SpaceX last year won NASA contracts worth up to $6.8 billion to develop private rockets and capsules to fly astronauts from Cape Canaveral by late 2017.

"There's going to be a bit of a race in the 2017, 2018 time frame about who's going to be flying the first NASA crew member from the Florida Space Coast," said Kathy Lueders, head of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, which is led from Kennedy Space Center. "This is going to be exciting."

SpaceX on Wednesday plans to launch a Dragon capsule from the Cape, testing the thrusters that would enable a crew to escape from a rocket emergency on the pad or during flight.

NASA has asked for $1.2 billion next year to keep commercial crew flights on track for 2017, but some in Congress question why two U.S. systems are needed in addition to Russia's Soyuz.

Garrett Reisman, a former astronaut who leads SpaceX's crew operations, said that this week's failed mission by Russia's Progress cargo vehicle is another reminder of the need for multiple backups.

The Progress issue follows last October's failure by an Orbital ATK Antares rocket shortly after liftoff, which destroyed a Cygnus cargo ship. A Cygnus is not expected to fly again until November.

On the crew side, the Soyuz provided critical access to the station after the Columbia disaster in 2003 grounded the space shuttle.

"I don't know how many examples you really need," Reisman said before the panel discussion began. "If we didn't have Soyuz when shuttle went down after Columbia, we would have lost the space station. If we didn't have Dragon when Antares went down for cargo, we would have a hard time getting U.S. supplies up to the station right now. And now with Progress going down, it's just another example of, having a mixed fleet is so important, because otherwise you have single-point failures."

In addition to the commercial crew flights by 2017, NASA is targeting a 2018 first test launch without a crew of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule.

A first flight with a crew is planned by 2021 or 2022, sending astronauts around the moon for the first time since the Apollo program.

"If you go out to KSC, you're going to see hundreds of workers building the new capability that's going to take people beyond low Earth orbit out into cislunar space," said Shawn Quinn, exploration systems manager for NASA's Ground Systems Development and Operations program at KSC. "And eventually, these launch pads in Florida, these facilities in Florida are going to support missions to Mars someday."