Arts in space: French experiences and elements of prospective

The French space adventure started more than 40 years ago. Its rich and long scientific and technical tradition made France able to occupy the place which is hers today. But what does happen to the world of arts, to which the French culture brought so much? Beyond some French artists belonging to the community of the space artists, do arts constitute a true dimension of the French space activity? Conversely, did space influence the national artistic culture? This paper proposes to tackle these questions according to a retrospective historical glance and to offer some prospective reflexions.     

Alexandre Ananoff (1910–1992): 30 years to promote astronautics before Sputnik

2012 marks the 20th anniversary of Alexandre Ananoff's death. Born in 1910 in Tbilisi, Georgia, the Russian–French space expert and enthusiast Alexandre Ananoff is known for being the organiser of the first International Astronautical Congress at La Sorbonne University, Paris, in September–October 1950, as well as being the author of the famous book L’Astronautique (1950) and for advising fellow author Hergé for his book adventures of Tintin on the Moon. The purpose of our paper is to present his complete works promoting space, from his first public presentations after discovering the works of Tsiolkovsky in the late 20s to his analysis of the first Sputnik launch in the popular French magazine Paris Match in 1957.A. Ananoff was a real ambassador for astronautics and a pioneer in space education for the general public—probably the first one in France. He built a unique collection of books and novels about space travel (donated before his death to the French Air and Space Museum of Paris-Le Bourget), wrote dozens of articles, gave numerous lectures and corresponded with most of the space pioneers around the world. However, he was criticised for being an autodidact and was very disappointed by the lack of consideration accorded him within his own country. During the 60s, he progressively stopped his space activities to turn his attention to becoming a specialist of 18th century French painters. He published his Memoirs of an Astronaut in 1978 and gave his last lecture at IAC in September 1979. He died in Paris on 25 December 1992, aged 82. His last wish was that his ashes could be sent on the Moon, an end accomplishment for all his efforts.     

Soyuz in French Guiana: A strategic perspective

After a proposition from Russia to France, ESA agreed to see Soyuz rockets take off from French Guiana. From industry, to governments and agencies, many Russian and European actors were involved in this project and they all had different motives. It is therefore relevant to try to discern them so as to understand the rationale behind this cooperative endeavor. Soyuz's primary role is to consolidate Arianespace commercial position in the launching market and to bring activity and founding to a stagnating Russian space sector. With this decision Arianespace will have a full range of commercially available launchers with Soyuz completing the two European rockets Vega and Ariane V. But since Vega and Ariane must have the priority, there is a risk to see an insufficient launch rate for Soyuz, which would not satisfy the Russian partners. Commercial elements alone cannot justify the agreement. There is a larger strategic ambition behind. What is at stake is the future development of innovative launch systems. It is important for ESA to maintain an autonomous access to space and to maintain a dynamic and strong European propulsion industry. Cooperation with Russia can offer an increase of expandable rockets capabilities and can pave for the next generation of launch vehicles. Moreover, we can detect an interest in acquiring a system that has the potential for human space flight capacity. Finally, the decision to launch Soyuz from French Guiana was the conjunction of Russian and French national interests, which led to a complete redefinition of the relations between Europe and Russia. It is of strategic importance that we, Europeans, adapt to this evolution and understand the new place that Russia takes in our space sector.     

The french educational satellite arsene

ARSENE (Ariane, Radio-amateur, Satellite pour l'ENseignement de l'Espace) is a telecommunications satellite for Amateur Space Service. Its main feature is that more than 100 students from French engineering schools and universities have been working since 1979 for definition phase and satellite development. The highest IAF awards has been obtained by “ARSENE students” in Tokyo (1980) and Rome (1981). The French space agency, CNES and French aerospace industries are supporting the program. The European Space Agency offered to place ARSENE in orbit on the first Ariane mark IV launch late 1985.     

Modelling and simulation of the space mission MICROSCOPE

MICROSCOPE is a French space mission for testing the weak equivalence principle (WEP). The mission goal is the determination of the Eötvös parameter $\eta$ with an accuracy of 10^?15. The French space agency CNES is responsible for the satellite which is developed and produced within the Myriade series. The satellite's payload T-SAGE (Twin Space Accelerometer for Gravitation Experimentation) is developed and built by the French institute ONERA. It consists of two high-precision capacitive differential accelerometers. One accelerometer is used as reference sensor with two test masses of platinum, the science sensor contains a platinum and a titanium proof mass. The detection of the test mass movement and their control is done via a complex electrode system. As a member of the MICROSCOPE performance team, the German department ZARM will be involved in the data analysis of the MICROSCOPE mission. For this purpose, mission simulations and the preparation of the mission data evaluation in close cooperation with the French partners CNES, ONERA and OCA are realised. The development status of the simulation tool which will represent the complex spacecraft dynamics and all error sources in order to design and test data reduction procedures is presented and some features are discussed in detail.     

A Franco–German view of Europe's ambition in space for the 21st century

Europe has at last started to integrate the assets of its broad set of actors into a comprehensive European Space Strategy. But will this first approach be ambitious enough to strengthen Europe as a global actor? In this contribution, the individuals responsible for strategy in the French and German space agencies seek an answer to this question. They do so by reviewing the historical background to European space efforts, and its role in shaping present-day activities; setting forth a vision of how Europe should proceed in space, and measuring current progress in drafting a European space strategy against this vision.     

European space governance: The outlook

For the third year in a row, the Paris-based French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), and the Secure World Foundation (SWF) joined together to organise their annual space conference. The event took place in Brussels on 13 September 2011, under the banner “European space governance: the outlook”. This report summarises the main outputs of this event.     

Russia's resurgence: Prospects for space policy and international cooperation

Based on a joint study initiated in 2007–2008 by the Policy planning staff (CAP) of the French Foreign Ministry and the space agency CNES, which brought together experts, researchers and industry insiders, this article considers the factors behind Russia's recent resurgence and the possible revival of its space programme. It examines how far the latter will require international cooperation in order to progress further and discusses likely areas of profitable collaboration with Europe in general and France in particular, given that country's long history of space cooperation with Russia and the need in the mid-term future to share the burden of developing ambitious new space programs. While there is in principle much potential, especially in the area of space transportation, there are also numerous challenges and uncertainties. How these are resolved will affect the level and success of any cooperative efforts of both sides.     

Compliance of disposal orbits with the French Space Operations Act: The Good Practices and the STELA tool

Space debris mitigation is one objective of the French Space Operations Act (FSOA), in line with Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) recommendations, through the removal of non-operational objects from populated regions. At the end of their mission, space objects are to be placed on orbits that will minimize future hazards to space objects orbiting in the same region. The FSOA, which came into force in 2010, ensures that technical risks associated with space activities are properly mitigated. The Act confers CNES a central support role in providing technical expertise to government on regulations dealing with space operations. In order to address the compliance of disposal orbits with the law technical requirements, CNES draws up Good Practices as well as a dedicated tool, Semi-analytic Tool for End of Life Analysis (STELA).     

National visions of European space governance: Elements for a new institutional architecture

The governance of space activities in Europe remains an open question, even more so since the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty, and the latest EC document and ESA declaration have revived the debate. This paper considers the strengths and weaknesses of the current governance model, and compares recent French, German, Italian and UK national documents in order to highlight their vision of space governance in Europe. Some elements of agreement emerge but, more interestingly, this comparison highlights their differences, especially with regard to the role of the EU as a supranational actor in the space domain.     

Discovering the basic strategic orientation of big space agencies

The aim of this paper is to identify the basic strategic orientations of some of the world's main space agencies. This study focuses on the Brazilian, French, European, Japanese, Indian and Russian agencies. Basic strategic orientations indicate the real space exploration objectives of large countries. This is useful because there are some ambiguous areas in the formal strategic documents published by these agencies. The results highlight the common objectives of the agencies studied, which is to have an important role in international political leadership even considering the specific objectives related to the economic and social contexts of the individual countries.     

Proposal for a new radiation dose control system for future manned space flights

Radiation risk on a future long-duration manned space mission appears to be one of the basic factors in planning and designing the mission. Since 1988 different active dosimetric investigations has been performed on board the MIR space station by the Bulgarian-Russian dosimeter-radiometer LIULIN and French tissue-equivalent proportional counters CIRCE and NAUSICAA. A joint French-Bulgarian-Russian dosimetry experiment and the dosimetry-radiometry system RADIUS-MD have been developed for the future MARS-96 mission. On the base of the results and experience of these investigations a conception for a new radiation dose control system for the future orbital stations, lunar bases and interplanetary space ships is proposed. The proposed system which consists of different instruments will allow personal radiation control for crew members, radiation monitoring inside and outside each habitat, analysis and forecasting of the situation and will suggest procedures to minimize the radiation risk.     

Narrative psychological content analysis as a tool for psychological status monitoring of crews in isolated,confined and extreme settings

This paper is about a pilot application of narrative psychological content analysis in the psychological status monitoring of Crew 71 of a space analog simulation environment, the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS). Both the method and its theoretical framework, Scientific Narrative Psychology, are original developments by Hungarian psychologists [5] (László, 2008). The software was NooJ, a multilingual linguistic development environment [11] (Silberztein, 2008). Three measures were conceptualized and assessed: emotional status, team spirit and subjective physical comfort. The results showed the patterns of these three measures on a daily basis at group level, and allowed for detecting individual differences as well. The method is adaptable to languages involved in space psychology, e.g. Russian, French and German in addition to English.     

Forecasting space markets

Space Policy is here reprinting edited extracts from two reports — one French, one American — which aim to forecast the market for space applications and launch services over the next 10 and 15 years respectively. Euroconsult 1986 edition of The World Space Industry Survey: Ten-Year Outlook gives a country-by-country analysis of policies and programmes; an evaluation of markets for space applications and a forecast of the market for launch systems. The Report on the 1986 Outside Users Payload Model, prepared by Battelle, Columbus Division, for the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration, provides an estimate of demand for launch services for payloads in a range of mission categories flown by countries outside the Soviet bloc. Using different starting points and methodologies, the two reports nevertheless draw convincingly similar conclusions.     

Natural killer cells after ALTAIR mission

Reduced in vitro NK cytotoxic activity have routinely been observed after both prolonged and short-term space flights. This study investigated the effects of space flight on NK cell functions, NK cell counts and the production of IL-2 and TNF by lymphocytes of French-Russian crew members. In the French cosmonaut, after 21 days space flight, the cytotoxic activity of NK cells, the capacity the NK cells to bind and lyse the individual target cells and the percentage of NK cells were decreased. In this cosmonaut a twofold reduction TNF production in cultures of lymphocytes stimulated with PMA and with the mixture of PHA and PMA was observed on the first day after landing. However, the activity of the production of TNF in 48-hour PHA-cultures of lymphocytes was unchanged and the biological activity of IL-2 was not reduced. The immunological examination did not detecte any substantial deviations from the norm in both russian cosmonauts after 197 days space flight. Various explanations for decreased cytotoxicity in cosmonauts after space flight can be proposed, and these include the defective function of NK cells and reduced numbers of circulating effector cells.     

Analogy between training for dancers and problems of adjustment to microgravity: an evaluation of the subjective vertical in dancers

"Moderne dance" (as opposed to a more academic or classical dance form) uses techniques from kinesiology, anatomy and improvization which are adapted to a cultural, technological and political environment. The function of a choreographic system is to take and give a measure of the world. This includes, with the present tendency of the evolution of culture, a new "naturalism" which seeks the secrets of the body. Dance movements express in terms of space the dimension fo the infinite. It gives somehow the measure of a world within which everything is relative. Except for the speed of light, time and space are bound together by the same principle. The qualities of body awareness and specific motricity in dancers imply--besides a strict discipline--balance, coordination, muscular performance and perfect orientation, problems that astronauts also encounter in microgravity. Could chosen exercises used in modern dance technique be applied to the training of astronauts? Dancer-choreographer Kitsou Dubois has been working in this direction since 1988. She was granted a "Villa Medicis Hors Les Murs" by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to carry on with her research at NASA, Houston, Tex. in April 1989. It allowed her to investigate the reality of this analogy. She intends to evaluate the dancers' subjective vertical refering to Mittelstaedt's observations on the proportional relationship between "space sickness" and some astronauts poor evaluation of the subjective vertical. This study should create a relationship between a choreographer's empirical intuition and a scientific reality.     

The lure of local SETI: Fifty years of field experiments

With the commemoration in October 2007 of the Sputnik launch, space exploration celebrated its 50th anniversary. Despite impressive technological and scientific achievements the fascination for space has weakened during the last decades. One contributing factor has been the gradual disappearance of mankind's hope of discovering extraterrestrial life within its close neighbourhood. In striking contrast and since the middle of the 20th century, a non-negligible proportion of the population have already concluded that intelligent beings from other worlds do exist and visit Earth through space vehicles popularly called Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs). In light of the continuous public interest for the UFO enigma symbolized by the recent widely diffused media announcements on the release of French and English governmental files; and considering the approach of broadening the strategies of the “Active SETI” approach and the existence of a rich multi-disciplinary UFO documentation of potential interest for SETI; this paper describes some past scientific attempts to demonstrate the physical reality of the phenomena and potentially the presence on Earth of probes of extraterrestrial origin. Details of the different instrumented field studies deployed by scientists and organizations during the period 1950–1990 in the USA, Canada and Europe are provided. In conclusion it will be argued that while continuing the current radio/optical SETI searches, there is the necessity to maintain sustaining attention to the topic of anomalous aerospace phenomena and to develop new rigorous research approaches.     

Ethological analysis of a polar team in the French Antarctic station Dumont d'Urville as simulation of space teams for future interplanetary missions

This new ethological study focuses on the co-adaptation of the crew's spatial behavior to social isolation in a polar base thus simulating long-term living and working of a space team. The method consisted in drawing the subjects' position (n=13) on an observation map at the midday and evening meals at the Dumont d'Urville French station in Antarctica, daily during the summer campaigns and weekly during the winter-over of the TA46 mission. Quantitative data are presented in geocentric (positions), allocentric (distances) and egocentric (orientations) analyses with an emphasis on three adaptative periods (first 3 months, intermediary 2 months and last 3 months of isolation). Results show a large space occupancy during the first week after arrival and the last week before departure from the polar base, and a team-members' grouping during the winter-over. On the over-all time, the inter-individual distances increase. The social orientations are higher at the beginning than at the end of the mission. Discussion underlies the pertinent use of such ethological indicators collected from polar stations as predictors of well-being and optimal-working of the future orbital and planetary stations users.     

The Mars Sample Return Project.

The Mars Sample Return (MSR) Project is underway. A 2003 mission to be launched on a Delta III Class vehicle and a 2005 mission launched on an Ariane 5 will culminate in carefully selected Mars samples arriving on Earth in 2008. NASA is the lead agency and will provide the Mars landed elements, namely, landers, rovers, and Mars ascent vehicles (MAVs). The French Space Agency CNES is the largest international partner and will provide for the joint NASA/CNES 2005 Mission the Ariane 5 launch and the Earth Return Mars Orbiter that will capture the sample canisters from the Mars parking orbits the MAVs place them in. The sample canisters will be returned to Earth aboard the CNES Orbiter in the Earth Entry Vehicles provided by NASA. Other national space agencies are also expected to participate in substantial roles. Italy is planning to provide a drill that will operate from the Landers to provide subsurface samples. Other experiments in addition to the MSR payload will also be carried on the Landers. This paper will present the current status of the design of the MSR missions and flight articles.     

Cooperative research in microgravity sciences during the French manned MIR missions

During the past ten years the French laboratories working in the field of fluids and material sciences had access to regular, long-lasting manned missions onboard the Russian MIR Space Station. Beyond the French scientific program that was performed with the ALICE apparatus, a cooperative research program was developed with DLR, NASA and RSA. This cooperation was based on bartered agreements that included the joint utilization of the instruments onboard the MIR station (ALICE, TITUS furnace from DLR, vibration device from RKK Energia) and the funding of dedicated cartridges (DLR) or thermostats (DLR and NASA), as well as launch services (NASA) by the Cooperating Agencies. We present a review of this program with a particular emphasis on its scientific results and on the progress that has been achieved in science and applications. They covered a large field of condensed matter physics, from material sciences to near-critical and off-critical phase separation kinetics and near critical fluid hydrodynamics (thermoacoustic heat transport and vibrational convection). The high microgravity relevance of all these investigations naturally led to outstanding results that was published in the world's best scientific journals. The analysis of the latest experiments performed during the PEGASUS mission shows they will not be an exception to that evaluation. Off-critical phase separation with NASA, pressure-driven piston effect and equiaxed solidification with DLR, heat transport under calibrated vibrations with RKK Energia, all will be presented. The conclusion will stress the international character of this microgravity research program, the conditions of its success and what can be gained from it in the perspective of the space station utilization.