We are gearing up for the announcement by NASA today which will name the Orion Contractor.

The United States begins its next step in human space flight with the announcement by NASA on today (Thursday) of a contractor to design and build spaceships to fly to the moon.

Lockheed Martin Corp and a partnership of Northrop Grumman Corp. and Boeing Co are vying for the work, estimated to be worth more than $18 billion over the next decade.

The Orion missions will include flights to the International Space Station, the moon and then Mars.

NASA is marching forward on its plans to go to the moon, Mars and beyond — an agenda enunciated by President Bush as the vision for space exploration in January 2004. One goal of that plan is returning humans to the moon as early as 2015 and no later than 2020.

NASA Administrator Mike Griffin has his multitasking hands full in shaping and implementing the vision strategy — from the ground up: new launch vehicles for crew and cargo, a six-person Crew Exploration Vehicle, as well as looking at the future of international cooperation in putting verve to the vision.

Griffin spoke to Space.com during the 20th Annual Conference on Small Satellites, held here earlier this month at Utah State University.

On Thursday, NASA is set to announce the prime contractor to design, develop and build the Crew Exploration Vehicle — now dubbed Orion — a replacement for the government’s space shuttle. As a system, the CEV will accomplish in many areas what the shuttle offers, Griffin said, but also must fly back and forth between the earth and the moon.

“In later decades, the CEV will be one piece of the Mars architecture. It’s how people will come home from Mars through the atmosphere. So the CEV has some pretty stressing requirements on it,” Griffin explained.

But the ultimate goal of the CEV program is not the creation of new technologies, Griffin warned.

“The CEV is primarily a tool for getting humans up through the atmosphere and back down through the atmosphere. And my goal is to do it as simply and safely as possible.”

What needs to be shaken off is the idea that the U.S. civilian space program is all about flying from Earth’s surface to low Earth orbit, Griffin added.

“The excitement is what we’re going to do at the moon; when we’re going to go to Mars and what we’re going to do there,” he said. “It’s not about the first and last hundred miles.”

Given the vision’s long-term strategy, harmonized with tight budgets, is the quest more of a mission impossible?

“Certainly not,” Griffin responded. “I just keep putting one foot in front of the other and moving forward. And I think that’s the strategy that is going to help us now.”

Griffin said the space agency has enough money to do the core things that it wants to do for exploration and science. “Science is well-funded,” he said; however, “we don’t have enough money to do … things as rapidly as all of us would like.”

Enlisting international partners

Griffin outlined his thoughts on the role of international cooperation within the vision.

“We hope to enlist international partners, to bring some of the elements that we won’t be able to afford to build,” Griffin said. “We don’t have big habitats, laboratories, power stations, things like that for a lunar base. We don’t have them in our budget. We have got transportation ‘to and from’ in our budget.”

The arrangement that NASA’s hoping for would be much like that currently in place for the international space station, Griffin said. But that’s also a pact that has been roundly criticized by the United States’ space station partners in the past.

“The criticism — to put slightly more detail on it — is that America dictated everyone’s role,” he said. “I’m not for exploration dictating anyone’s role except America’s. I’m saying this is what the United States will do.”

There are a myriad of other things that international partners or commercial entities could bring to the vision table, Griffin suggested, such as launching robotic cargo landers on Europe’s Ariane 5 to deliver scientific instruments and telescopes to the moon.

“We will be very receptive to that. But I’m not prescribing any of them. And I’ve been very clear about that,” Griffin added. “The role of international cooperation is not to help figure out what the United States will spend its money on.”

Three days from home

Griffin was blunt about NASA’s need to rekindle its engineering might to return humans to the moon — a repeat feat done in 1969 through 1972.

“People seem to have an attitude that because people two generations ago went to the moon, that we have all that experience, that we have the equipment just waiting in reserve. We don’t. We don’t have the equipment. We don’t have the tooling. In some cases, we don’t even have the basic technology any more. And we certainly don’t have the experience base in the people for spaceflight beyond low Earth orbit,” Griffin observed.

Before NASA can send an expedition to Mars, the space agency needs to re-create that full infrastructure, Griffin said. “And the place to apply it is at the moon, when you’re three days from home.”

In looking outward beyond the moon, Griffin said he envisions Mars as a human destination for the United States in the mid-2020s or beyond.

“I don’t think anybody thinks that 2025 or beyond is unrealistic. You could go to Mars sooner if we didn’t have a policy that says we’re doing other things. But our nation’s space policy says that we will finish the space station (and) that we will return to the moon. So if you’re going to do those things, then Mars is going to have to wait a bit. It’s a fiscal matter more than it is a technical matter,” Griffin concluded.

NASA will start converting Kennedy Space Center into a moonport in the spring of 2008, and a new rocket that will launch U.S. astronauts on lunar missions will be test-flown at a modified shuttle pad a year later.

What’s more, the agency on Thursday plans to announce the winner of a multibillion-dollar contract to build a new Apollo-style space capsule that astronauts will fly to the moon.

The bidders: Lockheed Martin and a Northrup Grumman-Boeing team.

“We’re in the final stages now of making that contractor selection,” NASA program manager Skip Hatfield said. “And we’re looking forward to getting that contractor on board with us as we continue our journey on into exploration.”

Dubbed Orion, the new space capsule will carry crews of six to the International Space Station and four on missions to the moon and Mars.

The crew transport will replace  ASA’s space shuttle orbiter.

Its first piloted mission now is scheduled for September 2014 — four years after the agency retires its shuttle fleet.

NASA also is building two new launch systems — Ares 1 and Ares 5.

A more powerful version of the shuttle’s solid rocket booster with a single-engine upper stage, the Ares 1 will launch the Orion space capsules and their astronaut crews.

The Ares 5 will be a monster rocket in the same class as the Saturn 5 rockets that NASA employed for the Apollo moon landing missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The huge booster will be used to launch lunar landers and Earth departure stages, which then will link up in low Earth orbit with the Orion capsules for moon trips.

NASA aims to start modifying KSC’s launch pad 39B for the Ares 1 rocket in the spring of 2008, NASA program manager Jeff Hanley said.

An initial Ares 1 test flight is scheduled for April 2009. The rocket will consist of a four-segment shuttle solid rocket booster with an inert fifth segment, a dummy upper stage and ballast in place of an Orion spacecraft.

In the event of a failure, NASA will have the option of launching a second test flight six months later

An Ares 1 test flight with a five-segment solid rocket booster and an upper stage powered by a single J-2 engine is scheduled for July 2012.

Two launches also are planned to test the Orion spacecraft without astronauts on board. Another Ares-1 would be launched on a test-flight with a cargo-carrying version of the capsule.

Those flights are scheduled between late 2012 and the fall of 2014.

NASA has yet to pick a pad for the mammoth Ares 5 rocket, but Hanley said the agency’s intent now is to use complex 39.

The options in that case would include building a new pad, modifying pad 39A or converting pad 39B into a dual use facility that could accommodate both the Ares 1 and Ares 5. A decision is expected in the new few months.

NASA Exploration Systems’ managers will host a press conference at 4 p.m. EDT Thursday, Aug. 31, to announce the prime contractor to design, develop, and build Orion, America’s next human spacecraft.

The press conference will be in the NASA headquarters auditorium, 300 E Street S.W., Washington. It will air live on the Web and on NASA TV. Reporters may ask questions from participating NASA locations. Reporters should coordinate with local agency centers by 4 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Aug. 30 for access information.

Associate Administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate Scott Horowitz, Exploration Deputy Associate Administrator Doug Cooke, Constellation Program Manager Jeff Hanley, and CEV Project Manager Caris A. (Skip) Hatfield will announce the selection and discuss the program.

Orion is the vehicle NASA is developing to carry a new generation of explorers back to the moon and later to Mars. Orion will succeed the space shuttle as NASA’s primary vehicle for human space exploration. Orion’s first flight with astronauts aboard is planned for no later than 2014 to the International Space Station. Its first flight to the moon is planned for no later than 2020.