On Thursday, July 21, 2011, the Space Shuttle Atlantis safely landed at Kennedy Space Center, completing the final mission of the Space Shuttle program. For three decades, the shuttle was a fixture in American consciousness when it came to space exploration and research. Now, the four decommissioned shuttles (Enterprise, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour) will no longer be shown blazing contrails into the airspace above Kennedy Space Center but, rather, will be on display at various museums and science centers across the United States. The end of the shuttle program has, naturally, led to much speculation. What is next for NASA? Is the U.S. done exploring space? Will other countries take advantage of the void? Should budding aerospace engineers start think about pursuing a different industry? To help us sort through some of these questions, we contacted electrical and computer engineering professor James Lumpp, Ph.D., who also serves as director of the Space Systems Lab at UK, (funded by NASA Kentucky). Dr. Lumpp’s work with the Space Systems Lab has enabled him and his students to interface with NASA on shuttle operations, as well as important experimental work aboard the International Space Station.
The Space Shuttle program has ended, and that has created confusion about the future of American space exploration. In fact, the cover of a recent issue of The Economist read: “The End of the Space Age.” Is this the end? Are we done with space?
That’s not really true. The end of the space shuttle program is a huge loss—no question about that. It had unique capabilities, but it was a 30 year old program and just one of many facets of the American space program. The reason some people are saying this is the end of the space age is that the U.S. doesn’t have the shuttle’s replacement clearly envisioned. After the Columbia tragedy in 2003, the Bush administration planned to retire the shuttle at the end of this past decade and replace it with the Constellation program. For 50 years, NASA always had a project in the pipeline, so Constellation replacing the shuttle was no big deal. But Constellation did not receive sufficient funding and when it was finally cancelled, it left a gap.
The U.S. will still have astronauts in space. The difference now is that, without the shuttle, there is only one way to get people up and down from the International Space Station—a Russian spacecraft called Soyuz. But the U.S. is set to send two unmanned commercial cargo ships to ISS in November/December, with the hope of eventually adapting it to carry astronauts. We’re certainly still active and maintaining a presence. There are many options for taking cargo up, but if the U.S., Japan or anyone else wants to send astronauts up, for the time being, they have to go through the Russians and Soyuz.
Your Space Systems Lab performed operations for both Discovery’s final launch and landing. What was the sentiment among your staff when the shuttle launched for the last time?
It was an honor, especially since we had hardware going up and down on that last flight. We do the real-time operations for activating and de-activating experiments, so we have a NASA console position on the fifth floor of Anderson Tower that allows students to talk to the controllers and astronauts. Typically, we work with astronauts on the International Space Station, but for the last two Shuttle flights, we performed operations on the Shuttle itself. Everything went really well. The final Shuttle crew was focused and efficient, and it was rewarding to be a part of something that had been a mainstay in space exploration. Our students were doing operations with the Shuttle crew on the last day of the last mission just three hours before the final retro burn that brought STS-135 back.
Our lab has developed a payload system for small experiments on the ISS. It is a permanent part of ISS and, experiments have been carried to the ISS aboard the Shuttle and other international cargo spacecraft. Retiring the shuttle poses a challenge for moving payloads to and from the ISS. The shuttle was the only way to carry large modules up the station and the only way to return payloads to Earth. Soyuz is primarily for moving people, not payloads. For the near term, getting experiments down from ISS without the shuttle is going to be a significant challenge.
What is the likelihood that the U.S. will fall behind other countries in space exploration?
The biggest risk the U.S. space program faces post-shuttle is permanently losing experienced aerospace engineers with exclusive, specialized expertise. Thousands of people have been laid off, especially at Kennedy Space Center. They have to go somewhere and if they take their expertise outside the aerospace industry, we will lose a significant amount of knowledge and skill. If that happens, even if the U.S. decided to ramp up space exploration funding in the future, we could face an overwhelming knowledge gap.
As far as falling behind other countries, the reality is that we’ve spent 50 years getting an incredible head-start. The U.S. has been, and is, the world leader in space exploration. Our space program is second to none and, personally, I can’t imagine the U.S. losing that lead.
We’re familiar with the tragic downside of the shuttle program (Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003); what were some of the positives?
It’s important to keep in mind that the shuttle’s main purpose was to build a space station. It was not always used for that, but now it has finally completed the International Space Station—which is an incredible facility with amazing capabilities and it promises at least ten years of utilization and new discoveries we can only imagine today. The shuttle also had the ability to recover damaged satellites—no other spacecraft could perform such a task in low Earth orbit. It went up and serviced the Hubble telescope, which became one of NASA’s greatest successes once it was repaired. Without the shuttle program, NASA wouldn’t have been able to accomplish any of those things. But really, the shuttle found its stride over the last ten years, once it was focused on building ISS. Hauling large quantities of equipment, along with personnel to do spacewalks to complete assembly, was a unique capability.
How should our aspiring aerospace engineers look at the changes at NASA? Do they still have a promising future?
Absolutely! This is one of the most exciting times to get into the aerospace industry. Commercial companies are developing rockets to dock with the ISS and even more small companies, like Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic, are designing vehicles to take paying passengers into space. It is a huge market that is starting to hit its stride. Today, anyone who can afford it can purchase tickets the same way they do for an airline flight—to go into space.
Our lab has also done a lot of work with CubeSats, miniature satellites typically made from inexpensive components which are rapidly becoming the standard across the world for rapid access to space. The acceptance of Cubesat standard throughout the aerospace industry is providing more opportunities to put hardware in space than ever before. It’s to the point today where a high school aerospace program could develop its own hardware and put it into space on a NASA launch vehicle. Access to space and the ability to launch small spacecraft into space is better than it ever has been. In the end, the Shuttle may be gone, but the future is brighter than it has been in years for someone entering aerospace.