14 DAY TRIAL // Representatives from the international commercial space exploration company Excalibur Almaz Limited (EA) have just delivered two partially-completed, Russian-built Almaz space station to a facility on the Isle of Man yesterday, January 7.
The company has ownership over several Almaz space stations, as well as over a number of reusable reentry vehicles (RRV), which it plans to make available for paying customers, for a wide variety of space and orbital applications.
JSC MIC NPO Mashinostroyenia, EA's Russian associate, developed both the stations and the return vehicles. The Almaz spacecraft were developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s, as part of a secret space program.
Three such missions were conducted beginning in 1971, but only two were successfully beyond the first few hours. Now, that the program is discontinued, and the spacecraft design has been flight-proven, there is no reason for Russia not to make money off its technology.
The stations and RRV that were delivered to the Isle of Man yesterday will be stored and analyzed here, They will be subjected to a variety of tests, and experts will analyze whether it's possible to complete them, and launch them to space.
EA does plan to use the spacecraft to go to low-Earth orbit (LEO), but the company announced plans to use the Excalibur Almaz Reusable Return Vehicles for this job, as they are already flight-proven.
Service module living and working habitats will also accompany the RRV to orbit, officials at the company explain. They add that delivering the space stations to LEO is only the first stage in a much more complex, long-term business plan.
Current data show that it's unfeasible for EA to begin launching these stations until the company does not reach an operations level of at least six launches per year.
These flights will need to be divided between procuring funds from space tourism, managing the space stations, and providing platforms for additional missions, at clients' requests.
Both governments and academic institutions could benefit from microgravity scientific experimentation, explain experts with EA, quoted by SpaceRef.
Company founder and CEO Art Dula explains that “this is another significant landmark towards achieving our stated goals with continuing technical support from leading aerospace firms in the US, Europe and Japan."
“We're very excited at this latest development involving Excalibur Almaz,” adds the Director of the Isle of Man Government's Business Development Agency, Tim Craine.
“Bringing the two Almaz Space Stations to the Island is a further exciting development and evidence of the Island's growing profile and reputation in the space world,” he concludes.