"Flexible Path” and Future Astronomical Missions
Abstract
The Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee, led by Norm Augustine, which was chartered by the White House to consider options for human space flight, has focused on a "flexible path” scenario for trips beyond LEO to carry out a range of tasks. This scenario has strong implications for possible servicing and deployment of future astronomical facilities, especially at Lagrange points, as well as visits to small bodies in the inner solar system. While the viability of that option as an priority agency goal will be under study by the Administration, NASA has been already directed by Congress to consider at least such servicing and deployment opportunities that could bear on it. The scientific and mission ramifications of such opportunities will be reviewed, along with the suitability of the conceptual space transportation architecture to carry it out, an architecture that could involves a lunar return program. Well studied astrodynamical considerations make both Earth-Sun L2 and Earth-Moon L1/L2 points of particular interest for such work. The relevance to this flexible path scenario to the NASA Decadal Planning Team (DPT) study will be reviewed. This study, completed in 2000, but largely eclipsed by the emphasis on lunar return, anticipated many of the challenges and opportunities and major technology investments now being considered.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #215
- Pub Date:
- January 2010
- Bibcode:
- 2010AAS...21548103L