14 DAY TRIAL // NASA could soon start official negotiations with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to buy H-2 Transfer Vehicles in order to fulfill its obligations of delivering water, food and materials for scientific experiments to the International Space Station after the space shuttle will be retired in the second half of 2010. Once the space shuttles are gone, NASA will have no means of making any space flight until 2015 when the Ares launch vehicles and the Orion crew capsule are expected to come into service.
The H-2 Transfer Vehicle is an unmanned spacecraft developed by JAXA, the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and the Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, capable of space flight and designed to deliver a payload weighing a maximum of six tons. The vehicle is expected to become operational by the end of the year.
According to the Yomiuri newspaper cited by Reuters, JAXA could sell HTVs to NASA at a price of about 131 million dollars. By contrast, Europe's Automated Transfer Vehicle costs about 600 million dollars to build and can carry a payload of up to 7.6 tons. NASA would have been capable of shortening its five year period of absence in space to only three; however the lack of funds cancelled this possibility. Alternatively, NASA has started working with various U.S. companies currently developing manned spacecrafts in the hope that this will lead to the space shuttle's successor, but there aren't too many chances that either of the respective companies will complete the development stage before 2010.
Nonetheless, a solution had to be found regardless of whether that was a manned or unmanned spacecraft. The vehicles produced by various rival space agencies around the world appeared to be the best. Apparently ESA's ATV is too expensive to build for NASA, thus JAXA's HTV could soon find its way to America. So far only unofficial discussions have been initiated and have remained in this stage for the last six months or so.