PARIS — The European Space Agency has signed an agreement regarding potential use of a commercial space station as it refines its strategy to maintain a human presence in low Earth orbit after the end of the International Space Station.
ESA announced at the Paris Air Show June 18 that it signed a memorandum of understanding with Thales Alenia Space and Blue Origin to study flying European payloads, and possibly astronauts, to the Orbital Reef commercial space station proposed by Blue Origin.
The agreement would also study potential European hardware contributions to Orbital Reef, ranging from subsystems to modules, as well as the use of future European spacecraft to transport cargo and crews to and from the station.
“By leveraging our expertise in space exploration infrastructures and vehicles, we’re committed to competing and investing in the development of technological solutions to empower Europe’s plans for the commercialization of low Earth orbit,” Giampiero Di Paolo, deputy chief executive of Thales Alenia Space, said in a statement about the agreement.
The agreement is part of efforts by ESA to explore how it will use commercial space stations, sometimes called commercial low Earth orbit destinations or CLDs, after the planned retirement of the ISS at the end of the decade. A year ago, ESA signed an agreement with Vast, another company planning commercial stations, to study potential use of those stations by the agency.
“We would really like to be able to continue to perform science and technology development in low Earth orbit,” said Andreas Mogensen, an ESA astronaut, during a panel discussion at the Paris Air Show June 19. “We are really exploring the possibilities of how we can cooperate, not just as a user and a paying customer, but also as a partner with many of these commercial entities.”
ESA has been testing out those approaches through private astronaut missions to the ISS. Marcus Wandt, a Swedish ESA reserve astronaut, flew to the station on Axiom Space’s Ax-3 mission last year while Polish ESA reserve astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski will go to the station on the upcoming Ax-4 mission.
He said ESA was “foresighted” in its decision to select reserve astronauts and support private astronaut missions. Astronauts on those short-duration flights are focused entirely on science, he noted, while long-duration crew members spend much of their time on station maintenance. “It really gives us a huge boost in our utilization of the space station.”
ESA wants to maintain a “continuous presence and use” of low Earth orbit in its long-term plans, said Daniel Neuenschwander, director of human and robotic exploration at ESA, said on the same panel. “CLDs are potential platforms that could enable the implementation of this objective.”
That would include agreements for a series of ESA missions to those stations. “We are definitely looking into the possibilities to have multiple astronaut flights,” he said. “I’m quite keen to see what these actors will propose as possibilities to conclude multi-flight agreements.”
The agency is also examining how to make the best research use of future stations. “On the ISS on the science side, we’ve been a bit spoiled,” said Angelique Van Ombergen, ESA’s chief exploration scientist, citing the range of experiment facilities on the station by ESA and other partners.
“When we think about the CLD framework, I don’t think there’s necessarily a lot of science we can do that we haven’t been able to do on the ISS,” she added. But, she added, “we can tailor much better the science we do on which platform and really optimize them.”
Neuenschwander emphasized that ESA preferred to work with CLDs where European companies are partners. “I would like to see a strong European industry presence” in those stations, he said. “The European Space Agency will support the projects which have a strong European share into it.”
