For those who don't read 'OBSERVATIONS' ... (you should !!!, it's FREE).

73 John. la2qaa@amsat.org

Joint Observations 07 July 2009 GM1SXX & LA2QAA

The problem with Space Stations... and a possible Opportunity.

When the International Space Station is scrapped.... probably in the 2015-2018 time frame, a valuable space asset will be lost. It needn't have been that way, and the Russians have wakened up to a new possibility, one that was sadly missed on the ISS.

ISS is built around MIR-2 hardware. The core, the Zvezda module, is essentially unchanged from the old MIR design, a tubular cylindrical living area with solar arrays attached to a docking 'ball' with five docking ports available. Once Zveda becomes life-expired, the whole assembly is useless. A more practical approach would have been to fly a 'passive' six-port docking ball, to which active modules can be docked. In this way, station elements could be detached and discarded as they reached the end of their design lives while the docking ball remains a 'permanent fixture' in space.

Enter 'Orbitalniy Pilotiruemyi Eksperimentalniy Kompleks', OPSEK, or the 'Orbital Manned Assembly and Experiment Complex' This is a plan for a future space station unveiled by the Russians in 2007, and documented by Anatoly Zak on his web-pages. It centres around the use of a passive 4 ton 'docking ball' with six ports, to which additional modules can be attached.

Such a docking ball in LEO would have the primary purpose of 'tying a space station together', by providing passive docking ports, but it could equally well serve as a long-lived platform for a 'parasite radio package' in the same way that the old RS10/11 and RS12/13 'satellites' worked. For those not old enough to know, these were 'parasite' transponder packages attached to spacecraft that were powered from the main craft. So long as the packages antenna(s) could be mounted on the ball's -Z axis, it could serve as a useful radio relay (transponder) in LEO. Such a package would have a fairly small physical footprint and would require very little driving power from the 'mother-ship' or solar panels (if fitted). It would obviously be desirable to derive power from the mother-ship in the interests of simplicity and longevity.

With launches becoming increasingly difficult to find on cost grounds, this would be one possible way to provide a future new transponder in LEO. If the package was small and light enough, it could possibly be carried to the (new) space station by a progress cargo vehicle as freight, and attached to the docking ball structure during a space walk. What is more, it could function for a long time, limited only by the overall life of the space complex.

Several people in the UK already have a track record in building space-rated hardware in addition to another amateur in Holland, who has built space qualified hardware including the backup transponder for HM-1 AKA VUSAT, as well as a new linear 'Pico-Transponder'. They know who they are... you don't need to know, at least not right now :-) The expertise already exists to supply space rated hardware to fly on such a mission. and we do feel that the possibility of flying such a mission should not be passed over. I'm sure there are people in Russia (from the old RS satellite team) who would be just as keen to see this idea fly.

73 AL & John

GM1SXX & LA2QAA