NASA reach out to Japan for shuttle replacement

This could increase the gap between the retirement of the space shuttles in 2010 and the launch of their successors, the Orion spacecraft and Ares I rocket, forcing NASA to rely on Russian Soyuz and future commercial spacecraft to send astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).

The potential delay is due to the combined effects of the higher-than-expected costs of returning the space shuttles to flight, budget cuts to the Orion and Ares programmes, and new legislation that may limit NASA's 2007 funding to that of 2006.

"I'm concerned about our ability to bring these new capabilities online by 2014," says NASA Administrator Michael Griffin. "If we do not quickly come to grips with this issue, we may have a prolonged gap between the end of the shuttle programme and the beginning of operational capability in our new systems, like that which occurred between 1975 and 1981, when we transitioned from Apollo to space shuttle." He says the gap led to the loss of engineering know-how within NASA.

The gap between the retirement of the shuttles in 2010 and the first flights of Ares and Orion – which will occur no earlier than 2014 – will leave NASA dependent on other nations and private companies for launches to the ISS.

Behind the move is NASA's concern that the retirement of its space shuttles will make it difficult for the United States to fulfill its responsibilities to deliver water, food and materials for scientific experiments to the International Space Station.

Japan has never sold such an expensive, domestically developed item of space hardware as the 14 billion yen HTV to other countries. If a contract is concluded, it will be the biggest in the country's 50-year space development history.

The HTV is being developed by JAXA, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd., Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and others. The cylindrical cargo spacecraft, measuring 10 meters in length and 4.4 meters in diameter, is capable of carrying a maximum of six tons of cargo. It will be launched on an H-2B vehicle, which is currently under development, and separated in space to dock with the ISS.

Japan, European nations, Russia and the United States share responsibilities for the delivery of necessary items to the ISS, where astronauts stay for long periods to carry out scientific experiments.

Currently, active cargo-transfer spacecraft are the space shuttle of the United States, Russia's Soyuz, both manned, and Russia's unmanned Progress and Europe's unmanned Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV).

Japan's HTV will be introduced next autumn, and the spacecraft will be launched at the rate of one per year.