14 DAY TRIAL // NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a press briefing on Thursday, July 7, that the imminent closing of the Space Shuttle Program (SSP) and last year's cancellation of Project Constellation do not mean that the future is not bright for American spaceflight.
The top official at the American space agency believes that the private sector will pick up the burden faster than anyone expects, bridging the gap between this year's retirement of the space shuttles and the first resupply flight carried out by a private spacecraft.
Speaking to reporters at a conference organized at the NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Bolden said that companies will enable cheaper, more frequent access to low-Earth orbit (LEO), the International Space Station (ISS), and eventually beyond, to Mars and asteroids.
He explained that freeing NASA from the burden of having to deal with the ISS would enable the agency to continue on its path to explore farther out into the solar system. The new space program calls for NASA to land a crew on an asteroid by 2025, and to reach the Red Planet by the 2030s.
“The future of human spaceflight is bright. You'll hear me say that over and over and over again,” the official explained. His keynote address was delivered to mark the signing of a new cooperation agreement between the KSC and Sierra Nevada Corp., which is building the Dream Chaser spacecraft.
“We're really pushing for a robust commercial space industry to relieve us of the responsibility for paying for access to low-Earth orbit. That's going to give us the opportunity to focus on exploration,” the Administrator explained.
The key component of the new space plans the United States is developing is the Space Launch System (SLS), a new heavy-lift delivery system that Congress called upon NASA to develop and built in the next half-decade, Space reports.
The final designs are not yet ready. The SLS will be a lot less capable than the ARES V rocket that the agency was to build under the now-canceled Project Constellation. However, the Obama Administration was not willing to support the development of this endeavor.
“The decision on a heavy-lift launch vehicle is going to be a very critical and very expensive decision for the nation that's got to carry us into this next era. We're close to making a decision on the configuration, but not quite there,” Bolden concluded.