Change of government in space

With the end of the term of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, the head of the US Space Agency, Jim Braidenstein, will also end his term. Many things can be said about the Trump administration, good and bad, but there is no dispute about one thing: it has chosen to advance the United States in the field of space.

In 2004, President George W. Bush’s administration introduced the Constellation program, which was to return the United States to the moon and from there to Mars. To this end, he began the development of manned spacecraft for space travel, chief among them Orion, the lunar lander Altair and another vehicle for missions on lunar and Martian soil. Also began the development of launch missiles of various sizes, including Ares 1 for manned missions and Ares 5 for launching cargo. The launcher program was based on the foundations of the space shuttle to reduce costs and preserve jobs in companies that had previously been involved in the shuttle program.

Five years later, President Barack Obama’s administration decided to cancel the program after many delays, delays, development failures and a huge waste of money for the American taxpayer. Of the large program, only two components remain of the giant launch vehicle Space Launch System (SLS for short), and the Orion spacecraft. In parallel with these developments, the Obama administration chose to privatize the delivery missions to the International Space Station and launch astronauts there, thus contributing to the development of private companies such as SpaceX and the development of additional, manned and unmanned spacecraft. In the field of unmanned space, the administration has invested large budgets in research missions of Earth from space and deep space exploration.

President Trump took office in early 2017, but the position of head of the space agency remained unmanned for more than a year, until Trump appointed Braidenstein – a former fighter pilot in the U.S. Navy, and a congressman who has focused more than once on space.

During Braidenstein’s tenure, NASA unveiled Artemis’ plan to land humans on the moon, selected new missions to study the solar system, signed additional contracts to privatize space missions. The United States resumed launching astronauts into space for the first time since space shuttle grounding in 2011 At the same time, the United States has signed cooperation agreements with many countries, but its relations with Russia have cooled, while attempts to contact China and form cooperation with it have ceased, despite the Obama administration’s efforts to renew them.

The plan of Artemis is named after Apollo’s sister in Greek mythology, as a reference to a plan from the 1960s in which man first landed on the moon. As part of the plan, the United States plans to land humans on the moon again by 2024, and pave the way for manned flights to Mars. The plan includes, among other things, the development of an international space station that will orbit the moon, the development of a manned lander for research missions and the development of cargo spacecraft, and supplies for transporting logistics equipment to the lunar colony.

A key element of the plan is the Lunar Gateway: the space station that is supposed to orbit the moon and serve as a final stop before landing on it. Its design and placement have been anchored in international contracts with more than ten space agencies, so the ability to cancel now, with the change of administration, is quite small. Similar to the International Space Station, the lunar station will also be composed of various units and components to be built around the world. The components will be launched to the moon using the SLS and private launchers like SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy and Blue Origin’s New Glenn. Despite the extensive international cooperation, despite the extensive international cooperation, Russia has not yet committed to its share of the Lunar Gateway as it sees it as a political project.

The next step in the plan is to land on the moon, conduct research on it and build a permanent colony. The manned missions will be performed in NASA spacecraft while the landing systems will be based on the development of commercial companies. In the meantime, three landers have been selected to develop private companies and in the coming months the spacecraft will be selected to serve the program.

The first part of Artemis is expected to start this year and is the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program – flying cargo to the moon through private companies. In this program, also known as CLPS for short, several companies were selected, including those that participated in the Google Lunar X Prize competition – in which SpaceIL participated. They are supposed to perform technological demonstrations in preparation for the manned flight, scientific experiments and demonstration of research capabilities and collection of samples from the moon.

As a result of the plan, the United States accelerated the development of SLS so that it could be used for Gateway construction missions. Despite the acceleration of development, many believe that the project will be canceled at the end, and will not take off beyond some missions, due to the high launch cost and because it cannot be reused.

For nearly three years of Breidenstein’s tenure, NASA has selected several groundbreaking scientific and engineering missions, including the Ingenuity glider (“ingenuity” or “resourcefulness”) on the Rover Perseverance (“Perseverance”) due to land on Mars in mid-February, and the Dragonfly glider ( “Dragonfly”) destined to land another 15 years on Titan, Saturn’s great moon.After nine years in which the United States relied only on Russia’s services to launch astronauts, last year two first manned missions were launched from United States soil – meanwhile using a SpaceX spacecraft and in the future also Using a Boeing spacecraft.

The International Space Station, which recently celebrated 20 years of manned operation, will continue to operate until 2025 with government funding and will then pass into private hands, including that of Axiom Space, which plans to add three new components to the station. Despite cooperation in the program between the United States and Russia, the two parts of the station will be separated after the privatization of the American part.

Braidenstein concludes his term with a significant increase in NASA’s budget – $ 23.3 billion compared to 20.5 billion on the eve of the Trump administration’s start. The increase is mainly due to investment in the Artemis program, but despite the budget increase, the manned landing on the moon does not appear before 2025. In existing and future missions, some of which included proposals to close some of them, such as the SOFIA flying telescope and the Roman space telescope (also known as WFIRST) due to a desire to complete the preparations and launch of the James Webb space telescope. -SLS.

The Trump administration has tried to cut back on space exploration missions, including climate change missions, an issue that was not on the president’s agenda, but the House and Senate budget committees thwarted the attempt. Despite opposition from budget committees, the U.S. Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a major consumer of NASA Earth research mission data, has also suffered significant cuts as a result of the administration’s climate policy.

The Department of Education at NASA, which is responsible for awarding scholarships to students and budgets for museums and science centers, has also closed due to budget cuts – but science education activities continue largely through education budgets earmarked for other projects.

In 2019, Trump issued a presidential decree ordering the establishment of a space force – a new military arm in the United States, aimed at allowing freedom of action in space and preserving the interests and assets of the United States, understanding that space has become a stand-alone battlefield and that other countries use it for military purposes. . Upon its establishment, the U.S. Air Force Space Command was abolished. The responsibility for operating the intelligence, navigation and communications satellites, as well as the responsibility for early warning of ballistic missiles and monitoring bodies in space have been transferred to the Space Corps. With his separation from the Air Force, Trump chose to emphasize the importance of the military space field to the United States, direct dedicated resources to it, and target a military body that would only deal with it.

The Space Force and NASA have two main interfaces: support for satellite launches and the rescue of astronauts after landing. Recently, astronaut Mike Hopkins, who is currently at the space station, was transferred to the Air Force Space Command Reserve Service to become a Space Guard astronaut. Name of the soldier serving in the space corps) in the ranks of the corps.

The administration of the new president Biden faces many challenges, including in the area of ​​space. The first of which is the election of the new head of NASA who will steer the agency towards the moon and Mars – the names of many candidates have been raised but apparently, the next head of NASA will be a woman. The leading candidate is Pamela Melroy – a member of the Biden administration’s transition team and a veteran astronaut who commanded the space shuttle. Candidates also mentioned Wanda Austin, president of the Aerospace Corporation, and Wanda Sigur, who was vice president of the Lockheed Martin Corporation.

The Democratic Party’s platform said it “supports strengthening NASA’s and NOAA’s Earth exploration missions, with a view to understanding how climate change is affecting our planet,” so it is likely that, and in the near future, the administration will invest in climate change-focused research programs.

Despite differences in approaches between governments, it appears that the Biden administration will continue to develop the Artemis plan, changing priorities and schedule – postponing the manned landings to 2028 to focus on building the Lunar Gateway. After the cooling of relations with Russia during the Trump administration and based on the attempt to strengthen and create new ties during the Obama administration, it is not inconceivable that there will be new calls for cooperation with Russia, and perhaps even with China.

Ben Nathaniel is a student of physics and chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a member of the committee of the Israeli Astronomical Society.

The article was published on the website of the Davidson Institute for Science Education