Purdue News

U.S.-Russian space cooperation the real 'peace dividend' payoff An American astronaut flanked by two Russian cosmonauts, smiling for a snapshot. Looming over this once-unimaginable scene: a photograph of Yuri Gagarin, Soviet cosmonaut and the first human in space. Not too many years ago Gagarin was up there with Sputnik as a symbol of the Soviet threat. The competition - in the arms race or the space race - was intense and attached a life-or-death urgency to each phase of the U.S. space program. Then came the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States. By early 1995, Russian cosmonauts had joined U.S. astronauts aboard the space shuttle on their way to the Russian space station Mir. "We're combining two great space superpowers," says David Wolf, Purdue alumnus and one of seven NASA astronauts who has served aboard Mir. "Our experiences during the shuttle-Mir program have really been a look into the crystal ball to the International Space Station." The shuttle-Mir program, a series of resupply and cooperative missions aboard the aging space station, have become known as Phase 1 of construction of the next stage of human exploration of space, the International Space Station. ISS, dubbed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as the largest scientific cooperative program in history, will combine the resources of 16 nations to build a permanent orbiting outpost in space. In terms of money saved and headaches avoided by putting astronauts on Mir, Wolf says the list goes on and on. One example is the communication system he is helping design for ISS, enlightened by lessons learned aboard Mir. On Mir, a rigid communication schedule was followed. As Mir passed over ground relay stations, Wolf and his two Russian crewmates had to make their way to the module that contained the communication equipment. "That was how we got our information from the ground on the next phases of experiments and the work we would be doing," he says. "But it makes it awfully hard to conduct experiments if you're constantly having to drop what you're doing and go talk to Earth." So ISS, which Wolf describes as "essentially an orbiting research laboratory," will have a wireless communication system so that work can be carried on simultaneously while communicating with ground personnel. Although nations as diverse as Brazil, Japan and members of the European Space Agency will participate in funding, building and occupying ISS, the United States and Russia are far and away the greatest contributors of expertise in space exploration. For that reason, Wolf says, the real "peace dividend" realized from the end of the Cold War is the cooperation of the two old rivals in space. "I can't imagine trying to build ISS without the knowledge we've gained through the shuttle-Mir program," he says. Wolf played a large role in that process of discovery. Before his mission to Mir began in September 1997, he trained for the flight at Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Facility in Star City outside Moscow. Since his return in January, he has gone back to Russia for debriefings and, at the Johnson Space Center, he continues to help plan biomedical research that will be performed aboard ISS. Among the experiments will be continuation of Wolf's work in three-dimensional tissue research, which he conducted aboard Mir and before that at Johnson Space Center. A medical doctor and electrical engineer, Wolf holds 11 patents on equipment related to growing tissue free of gravity. He predicts astonishing strides will be made in human tissue research aboard ISS. "We are laying the groundwork for a field I like to call tissue engineering," he says. "The goal is one day to be able to build human organs." Wolf marvels not just at the cooperation of Russians and Americans, but of the complementary nature of the space programs of two world powers competing to get to space first and best. "The Russians are especially adept at long-duration missions, but not so good at bringing back equipment and scientific experiments because the capsules they use are so small," he says. "The space shuttles, on the other hand, are essentially trucks that can bring down as much as they take up." Besides the immense satisfaction of being an ambassador in once-forbidden territory, Wolf realized a boyhood dream by taking a spacewalk from Mir in January. His task was to inspect the outer skin of the station with a spectroreflectometer, a laser device that measures the damage done to the hull by micrometeors, molecular oxygen and space debris. Besides assessing the condition of Mir, the data will be used to design better coatings for the International Space Station. But the real thrill for Wolf was setting out into the void, a goal of his since he was 9 years old - back when Russians were competitors rather than the partners they are today. "I never would have thought it would take place from a Russian spacecraft in a Russian space suit," he says. "It was a 32-year wait, but it was worth it."