The Observatory: Collaborating to the Stars
The Observatory is a new weekly series that brings together students, alumni, and professionals associated with OSU Battelle Center to write about topics that are relevant to the mission of our center. Our guest writer this week, Noah Gula, is an OSU Battelle Center student researcher and is currently pursuing a M.S. degree in Aerospace Engineering, studying with Dr. John Horack. Noah earned his B.S. in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering in May 2020.
The past six months for the aerospace community have shown comforting resilience in the turmoil that continues to surround us. In May, astronauts aboard the SpaceX Dragon spaceship flew to the International Space Station, marking the first time a commercial company has delivered humans to the world’s most complex research lab. Then, July showed three different countries launch a robot to Mars, each of which will arrive early next year. Finally, the astronauts who went to the ISS with SpaceX returned to Earth in August, successfully establishing the US capability to send humans to and from space for the first time in nine years.
All of these summer success stories had one thing in common: collaboration. The United Arab Emirates spacecraft on its way to Mars, aptly named Hope, was developed in partnership with universities in the US and launched on a Japanese rocket from the Tanegashima Space Center. The NASA-SpaceX partnership was the first of its kind and opened a door to an entirely new approach to put humans in orbit. NASA’s next crewed spacecraft, called Orion, is being designed, built, and tested by Lockheed Martin, Orbital ATK, Aerojet Rocketdyne, European Space Agency, various NASA facilities, and many others. From the 14 primary contractors for the Apollo program to the 15 countries which make up the partners of the International Space Station, the aerospace industry has been defined by massive projects. Collaboration is necessary because these projects would be infeasible for a single institution to accomplish alone.
Space industry partnerships transcend beyond a single agency, state, or country. These partnerships have realized the value found in diverse perspectives and collaboration. With the commercial space market maintaining its momentum, and NASA furthering its interest in returning to the Moon, the trend of collaboration in the space industry shows no signs of wavering. Even as a pandemic disrupts most economic sectors, space missions often have national security concerns or launch windows constrained by planetary orbits. The motion of the planets does not wait for humans. In other words, the show must go on, and the aerospace community has found a way to do just that in the partnerships built since its founding in the mid-20th century.
