The New Space Age: Global Collaboration on Robotic and Human Exploration of the Solar System

"The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in."

Robert Heinlein

The number of space agencies in the world has been steadily rising over the past few decades and there are now over 36 separate space agencies around the world, but will they work together or will we keep wasting time, energy and resources reinventing the space wheel?

Nicolas Peter, a research fellow at the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI), told a gathering in Vienna recently that he believes that the era of launching space missions to bolster national prestige is now behind us, and that new opportunities for cooperation have emerged since the end of the Cold War. He predicts that an imminent third phase of space exploration will inspire nations to work together.

We can see the beginnings of this sea change in cooperation with the European Space Agency's (ESA) direct support of China's Chang E-1 Moon mission launched on October 24th by deploying three ESTRACK stations that will track Chang'E-1 on the flight to the Moon and during the critical Moon orbit insertion.

Engineers at ESOC, the European Space Operations Centre, in Darmstadt, Germany, are in 'on the loop' - in voice communication - with Chinese mission controllers at BACC, the Beijing Aerospace Command and Control Center.

The ESA's 15m European Space Tracking (ESTRACK) network stations at Maspalomas (Spain) and Kourou (French Guiana) will be used at the start of ESA's tracking campaign and it will be joined later by ESTRACK's DS1 - the giant 35m deep-space station at New Norcia, Australia.

The Vienna conference Humans in Outer Space – Interdisciplinary Odysseys held last month, was “the first comprehensive trans-disciplinary dialogue on humans in outer space.” It brought space scientists together with historians, lawyers, political analysts, philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, writers and others. It was organized jointly by the European Science Foundation (ESF), the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Vienna-based ESPI.

Until recently the humanities had little input into European space policy, which has been dominated by political, industrial and scientific considerations. But the new goal is to establish a clear voice for a newer and broader constituency to contribute to the future of human beings in outer space.

Peter said there had been two phases of space exploration since the first Sputnik satellite was launched 50 years ago. The first phase, up to the early 1990s, was driven by Cold War rivalry between the US and the former USSR with cooperation extended to political allies of the two principal space powers. The second phase, up to the present, has seen the emphasis shift to scientific and practical applications of space with many new countries developing space programs.

Yet another vivid example of our new Space Era are the radio astronomers and engineers of 17 nations building the world’s biggest telescope, called the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), the largest and most sensitive radio telescope ever. It is likely to consist of thousands of dishes, each 10 - 15 m in diameter. Special antenna tiles in the core of the array will form a "radio fish eye lens" for all sky monitoring at low frequencies. It will house 8,000 antenna and discs occupying a surface area of 50,000 square meters -an array of 3,000 kilometers with the goal of tapping bio-signatures existing in the Universe.

The world's radio astronomy community is working together to conceptualize the SKA -This will allow many independent observations at the same time. The joint receiving area of all these dishes and panels will add up to approximately one million square meters. The SKA will require super-fast data transport networks and more powerful computing than ever before.

South African and Australia are the only two countries remaining on the shortlist to site this mega telescope. A final decision on the site is expected by 2010 and construction should start in 2014.

The SKA will unravel the mysteries of the origins and age of the universe. It will help us to answer fundamental questions about the laws of nature, including the study of dark energy and dark matter as well as the formation of the first galaxies, stars and planets. If there is life somewhere else in the universe, the SKA will help us find it.

The number of space agencies in the world has been steadily rising since the 1990s. There are now bilateral and multilateral agreements between most of those agencies. The advent of the International Space Station has also opened the gate by making it possible for many countries to take part in a long-term, structured program of space research. Peter says “Space Exploration 3.0” is about to begin. Rather than having competing states, a new era could usher in cooperation between many parties in an open and inclusive international environment.

“It will involve industry, universities and other non-governmental organizations. This adventure will be driven primarily by a quest for knowledge, involving not only the hard sciences but arts and humanities as well. We’re evolving towards an open market situation where a lot of new actors will be able to join the new space race.”

Earlier this year, fourteen space agencies – including big players from the US, Russia, China, Japan, India and Europe – agreed on a new global exploration strategy. It provided for collaboration on robotic and human exploration of the solar system including the Moon, Mars, the asteroids and the moons of the giant planets.

The 58th International Astronautical Congress also stressed a theme of international cooperation at the 5-day conference held earlier this year in Hyderabad, India. There were around 2,000 international delegates, which included heads of global space agencies.

Peter said that kind of cooperation will allow partners to make the best use of resources and to mount missions that would not otherwise be possible. He believes it’s important for space to be open to all countries and not just those with the technical means to build and launch spacecraft. He said there was no conflict between exploratory and economic motives for being in space and called for a future of “utilitarian exploration”.

Space exploration, he said, could inspire nations to work together for a common purpose. “For anyone who had the chance to witness the first Moon landing, it was certainly something really important to a lot of people and not only in the US,” he said. “However, that was not international cooperation. A global exploration strategy will allow humanity to assemble behind a peaceful goal. Space exploration is mankind’s next grand challenge.”

Posted by Rebecca Sato with Casey Kazan.