THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE

The exchange of the 14th resident crew of ISS continues the occupation of the space station. A new crew is schedule to take over in March 2007 and Thomas Reiter, the German astronaut launched on STS-121 will continue to fly on the station with the EO-14 crew until STS-116 arrives with ISS-15 flight engineer Sunita Williams. Several European, Japanese and Canadian astronauts are expected to conduct short – and long-duration visits to the station in the coming years.

The Chinese have announced that their next mission will occur in 2008 and will feature an EVA. Rendezvous and docking, and the creation of a small (Salyut class) space station are their stated goals, along with eventual manned exploration of the Moon.

Several names have been identified as potential candidates for future space flight participants, although recent reports offering tourists the chance to perform a 90- minute EVA from ISS, or possibly fly on circumlunar flights are not likely to come to fruition for some considerable time.

Flight operations to ISS will continues, with roughly two Soyuz flights per year until around 2010 when the Shuttle retires. It is probable that Soyuz flights will continue and may well increase (given adequate funding) until the replacement Clipper spacecraft planned by the Russians is funded and tested. Until then, Soyuz will remain the ISS crew ferry vehicle and emergency crew return vehicle once Shuttle is retired. American participation on ISS is expected to change in 2016 with the completion of their primary research objectives in support of the Vision for Space Exploration plans that were announced in 2004.

Design of the new American Crew Exploration Vehicle is underway and the two launch vehicles – called Aries – have recently been revealed. These will support the manned American return to the Moon, hopefully by 2019 and the 50th anniversary celebrations of Apollo 11. These new landings will include extended surface explora­tion, leading to the creation of a scientific research station on the surface It is hoped that these studies will lead, eventually, to human expeditions to Mars.

The current (October 2006) manifest for flights between 2006 and 2011 can be found in Appendix C.

All of the missions and programmes, if they reach flight status, are for a future edition of this log. With the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s historic first flight into space less than five years away, the missions counting down towards that milestone have already begun. The story continues …