Europe looks to EADS to build a European space shuttle

16 May 2008

EADS has just announced that its Astrium division has designed a variation of Europe's new space station freighter, known as the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), to make a crew ship capable of carrying three people. Sourya Biswas reports

The European Space Agency (ESA) may have had a flourishing business in satellite launching using its Ariane series of rockets, but does not currently possess its own human space transportation system and is reliant on the Americans and the Russians to get its people into orbit.

All that may soon change if European firm European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company's (EADS) plan to build a passenger-carrying variant of its space station freighter comes to fruition.

EADS, which also makes the passenger airplane Airbus and the military helicopter Eurocopter, has just announced that its Astrium division has designed a variation of Europe's new space station freighter, known as the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), to make a crew ship capable of carrying three people.

Limited details were released in Bremen, Germany, on Tuesday; further information and a mock-up are expected at the Berlin Air Show this month.

This is not the first time that the ESA has proposed to build an orbital vehicle. Back in the 1980s France, a member of the ESA, had pressed for an independent European manned launch vehicle. Around 1978 it was decided to pursue a reusable spacecraft model and starting in November 1987 a project to create a mini-shuttle by the name of Hermes was introduced.

The craft itself was modelled comparable to the first proposals of the Space Shuttle and consisted of a small reusable spaceship that would carry 3 to 5 astronauts and 3 to 4 metric tons of payload for scientific experiments.