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By Anne K Walters, dpa


For a world that depended on the United States as the cornerstone of international cooperation in space, NASA's uncertain way forward has triggered a reshuffling of global ambitions.
Will Russia gain unprecedented leverage in space and on Earth? Will China build its own competing coalition of manned space efforts?

These questions are raised by the looming retirement of the ageing U.S. space shuttles later this year and the scrapping by U.S. President Barack Obama of a new moon-worthy spacecraft under the Constellation program.

The most obvious change will be the rise in Russian prominence. After 2010, its Soyuz will be the only way for humans to reach the ISS, after a decade-long cooperation by space agencies, including the U.S., Russia, Japan, Canada and Europe.

Russian space agency chief Anatoli Perminov indicated that Moscow plans to jack up the price of its services in 2012 after existing agreements expire. While he did not give any exact figures, the U.S. is already paying US$306 million to use Russian shuttles through 2011. And it's clear to many that Russia hopes to boost its share of the space technology market with the profits.

In the U.S. Congress, worry grows about NASA being left at the whim of Russia.

"My hope is our relations with the Russians are going to get better, but who knows what geopolitics will be for the next 10 years?" Florida Senator Bill Nelson said.

Obama's plan calls for money to be poured into developing a commercial ferry into low-Earth orbit, trashing several years of planning for Constellation. That led Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford to recall how China abandoned its oceangoing fleet before Christopher Columbus discovered the New World.

"How ironic ... that today we consider abandoning our space-worthy vessels, ending a half century of American leadership in space exploration just as the Chinese ramp up their own space program and aim for the moon," she said.

India also has its sights on the stars, has already conducted an unmanned mission to the moon and is planning a reusable launch vehicle, Avatar, to deliver a 500-to-1,000-kilogram payload into orbit at fairly low cost.

China in 2005 became only the third nation to send an astronaut into orbit. It plans to develop its own space stations and appears to be forming a separate international nexus for space travel.

Li Xuebin, deputy director of the Beijing Areospace Control Centre, says China's wants "peaceful development" that can compete for commercial and technological influence. China insists that the country has not entered a "space race" with the United States.

Scott Pace, the director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, notes that the transition in U.S. space policy could open the door to broader cooperation with other countries with fledgling space efforts.

Japan, with which the U.S. already partners, comes immediately to mind, with its operation of the ISS's Kibo module. Japanese space agency spokesman Shuji Araki told dpa that "transporting supplies and people to the (ISS) is important. So we are paying attention to where it will go from here."

"We have yet to know whether the U.S. or a private industry will produce another manned space transportation system after the retirement of the space shuttle this year," Araki said. "If they do, we would discuss whether we would use it or not. Until then, we will continue to depend on the Russian Soyuz."

The European Space Agency, which like Japan will still be able to carry cargo into space, is equally ill at ease with the idea of depending only on Russia for human transport.

"This is certainly a problem," European Space Agency head Jean-Jacques Dordain told dpa. "The Soyuz capsule can only carry astronauts, and to transport cargo they would have to fill their pockets."

Dordain also acknowledged how the U.S. shift in focus has shaken up their own planning.

"We have different ambitions as a consequence of decisions taken in the United States," he said.

Despite the gloom cast by shifting U.S. focus, Washington has made clear its commitment to the ISS through 2020, four years longer than originally planned.

Analyst Pace worries that the scrapping of the return-to-moon program goes against the spirit of a 2007 international agreement for space exploration developed with the understanding that the U.S. would continue its efforts to build a replacement vehicle.

"What we decide in the U.S. is not up to us alone but is done in conjunction with these other countries," he noted. "It's really unfortunate that we would walk back from the kind of international consensus that we had worked really hard to build over the last several years."



China Post, TW,  edited