The dramatic impact of the Challenger explosion on the U.S. launch and satellite industries will not be repeated in the aftermath of the Columbia disaster, experts say.

When the Challenger and its crew of seven were lost in 1986, the consequences for the U.S. launch business were “devastating,” said Marshall Kaplan, director of space activities for Rockville, Md.-based Strategic Insight Ltd. Since then, U.S. government policy has changed to encourage the emergence of a viable launch sector to place satellites into space.

In 1986, the U.S. government encouraged the shuttle’s use for commercial payloads. At the time, the Atlas and Delta rockets had both stopped launching, Kaplan said.

“When the Challenger accident occurred, the U.S. had no launchers,” Kaplan said. “It was one of the big reasons the [French] Ariane rocket became a success. [The United States] lost a lot of ground and we have never made it up.”

With the shuttle no longer used for commercial launches, the impact of Columbia’s breakup mainly is limited to the loss of its crew, the scientific work performed onboard and the spacecraft itself. The destruction of the shuttle will not have any “major impact” on the commercial launch industry, Kaplan said.

The length of time the shuttle program will be idle depends upon how long it takes investigators to find the cause of the accident and take corrective measures.

A delay of more than nine months probably would cause the two astronauts and one cosmonaut on board the International Space Station to be returned to Earth in a Soyuz capsule already on orbit, Kaplan said.

“The delay could [even] be a year or two, depending on what fix might be needed,” Kaplan said.

The shuttle program was idled for two-and-a-half years after the Challenger failure due to the hardware changes that were required, as well as intense scrutiny from lawmakers that led to caution at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) before attempting another mission.

Kaplan judged that the Columbia accident “had nothing to do with the age of the shuttle and it had nothing to do with funding cutbacks. What it had to do with is that somebody made a mistake that has yet to be determined. There usually is a series of things that go wrong when something like this happens.”

Mark Chartrand, a Baltimore-based satellite consultant, said the lack of commercial missions conducted by the shuttle program means the Columbia disaster will have a minimal impact on the commercial satellite industry.

“It might make a small amount of difference if some government payloads that otherwise would have gone on the shuttle are moved onto commercial launchers due to a long stand- down,” Chartrand said. He predicts that the shuttle program could be grounded for at least a year.

David Logsdon, manager of space operations at the Aerospace Industries Association, disagrees. He sees a delay of a few months, not years. The three remaining shuttles should be able to accommodate the planned missions once the vehicles are returned to service, he said.

However, the loss of two out of five vehicles may spur the U.S. government to boost funding for space exploration and “bump up” the availability of a next-generation launch vehicle by a few years from 2020, Logsdon said.

The shuttle has been handicapped in launching satellites because it is not as accurate as expendable launchers in positioning them, Chartrand said. The reason is that the shuttle requires a two-step process to launch a satellite. First, it takes the satellite into space in the cargo hold, then releases the payload from the cargo bay to drift miles before an engine is fired on the spacecraft to put it into geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO), he explained.

–Paul Dykewicz

(Marshall Kaplan, Strategic Insight, 301/977-1676; Mark Chartrand, 410/235-6932; David Logsdon, Aerospace Industries Association, 202/371-8506)