Rescuers on Earth can reach many harsh environments: stranded boaters in the ocean, people injured while skiing in the mountains, and plane crash victims in rural areas.
But there is currently no emergency rescue system for it room – and there may be a way to change that. The nonprofit Rand Corp. suggests that a Space Rescue Service, if funded and given a strong enough mandate, could be deployed to help astronauts or tourists trapped in space. low Earth orbit – or even on the moon.
The idea was suggested in a report from November 2023, “Select Space Concepts for the New Space Age.” Certainly, there are many questions that need to be answered before a Space Rescue Service can get underway: how this fits into existing United Nations treaties on space exploration, who would be responsible, who would fund it and what technologies might be needed, for example .
But if these challenges were met, author Jan Osburg told Space.com, the service would fill a much-needed “gap” in space exploration. (He borrowed the word “gorge” from a Report 2021 about the space rescue problem by the Aerospace Corp.which influenced Rand’s work.)
“It seems obvious,” Osburg said. “The more people flying in space, the greater the chance that something will go wrong.”
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From August 2023 less than 700 people have reached space, although the definition of space varies depending on who you talk to. The majority of these individuals were professional astronauts. However, a select few were tourists who paid for their seats, or commercial astronauts with specific mission training, like what we’ve seen on Axiom space missions to the International Space Station or Inspiration-4who used both SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicles to reach Earth orbit.
Of that small group of spaceflyers, 21 died during their missions, said Nigel Packham, NASA’s Associate Director of Safety and Mission Assurance, in a recent interview with Space.com sister publication Live Science. (However, the number may vary depending on how the space is defined.) Dozens of other people in the space suffered critical safety issues from which they recovered, such as Apollo 13‘s explosion on the way to the moonor Gemini 8 get out of hand above the earth.
Sometimes emergencies arise within a few seconds or minutes, Osburg acknowledged, but he said there was at least one instance where a theoretical Space Rescue Service might have been useful for an extended problem. Engineers had suspicions about the integrity of heat shield tiles on NASAs spaceship Columbia for days before its fatal return to Earth on February 1, 2003, given that video footage showed foam from part of the external tank mounting appearing to collide with tiles near the orbiter’s wing during launch two weeks earlier. But for many reasons explained in the long run Columbia Accident Investigation Reportthe astronauts still came back the Earth’s atmosphereand all seven lost their lives.
NASA obviously implemented dozens of lessons learned from Columbia, including having backup shuttles available on the launch pad for the remainder of the program in case of problems. Osburg added that SpaceX’s recent pace Falcon 9 rocket launches – that send people or satellites into space – suggests a new era in which multiple types of rockets could be on standby to help people in trouble, if there is time to save them.
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Osburg also pointed out the International Space Station as a location where numerous backups are available in case of problems on board. “NASA has really solid plans,” he said, given that both Russia’s Soyuz and SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft now regularly serve the orbiting complex, and that Boeing’s Starliner could do the same in the near future.
And the backup idea has already been put into practice, at least during the planning phase: when a Soyuz spacecraft docked with the ISS suffered from coolant leakage Late last year, NASA quickly created a backup scenario, casting doubt on the ability to return the three crew members safely to Earth. The agency suggested allowing for a fifth crew member to climb into a dragon that was also docked at the ISS, using a modified seat attached to the floor. (Fortunately, that idea never had to be implemented, as another Soyuz was launched to the ISS within weeks.)
Further into the future, Osburg pointed to the rise of SpaceX Starship transportation system in space as an important vehicle that the community is waiting for. (SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk hopes Starship can launch several times a week or even several times a day.) For low Earth orbit, companies like Virgo Galactic and Sierra Space are working on their own next-generation vehicles that will likely be able to fly astronauts several times a week, once they’re ready.
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Although Osburg says there will be a Space Rescue Service in a decade or more, the key is to start planning now — and Rand, he emphasized, isn’t trying to take responsibility or say they have all the answers would have on how such matters should be implemented. an idea.
But there are ideas that the community might be able to borrow from. For example the International Liaison Office for Submarine Escape and Rescue aims to rescue submarines regardless of where they are stranded or what their nationality is. In space circles, another useful example could be that of NASA Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO). That office was implemented shortly after a small asteroid unexpectedly exploded ChelyabinskRussia on February 15, 2013, to better coordinate a rapid response to such consequences.
The PDCO aims to connect multiple government organizations, as well as international partners, to address scenarios where this could happen asteroids pose an immediate threat to Earth. For the time being, the partners are regularly conducting tabletop exercises to simulate what could be done if there were ever an imminent impact. Fortunately, such scenarios remain hypothetical at this point, because despite decades of searching, astronomers have yet to find any dangerous asteroids on a possible collision course with Earth.
Osburg, who is studying planetary defense There are also problems, said a good defense strategy in that case also long-term planning: examples of this are space-based infrared sensors to detect incoming asteroids, or a network of fast-reacting launch vehicles that can leave Earth at short notice.
“But there are challenges in striking a balance between open global cooperation or unrestricted global cooperation,” he acknowledged, given the security and trade issues. On the other hand, he added, “we’re all in this together, and we have to save the planet in the hopefully extremely remote event that something big comes our way.”
The first few steps toward a Space Rescue Service, Osburg said, could start with regular space conferences where researchers and engineers meet. “It starts with identifying organizations that are involved, both on the government side and on the industry side,” he says. Discussions then need to take place about costs and ways to make rescues easier; one is to continue the standardization of things like docking ports so that, for example, spacecraft can serve each other in space when necessary.
Some of the legal infrastructure could also be expandable, although Osburg emphasized that this is not his area of expertise. The United Nations already has a framework for international cooperation under the 1967 Outer Space Treatythat underlies most international space laws, along with a “rescue agreement” for its signatories returning stranded astronauts to their country of origin here on earth.
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NASA also has its own international agreements for allies. The Artemis chords include both peaceful norms in space exploration and, for a select number of signatories, agreements for cooperation in lunar missions. The ISS agreement covers issues such as legal responsibilities on the space station, involving the signatories to that agreement; private operators such as Axiom Space follow strict rules to allow commercial astronauts on board.
Osburg added that regardless of how future agreements are implemented, all actors in space must have informed consent about the risks – including space tourists. “You can’t plan for or provide resources for every contingency.”