A congressional committee promised Thursday to scrutinize NASA and its spending as the agency proceeds with a program to take astronauts to the moon and Mars. The space agency faces hidden costs by starting development of the spacecraft and rockets for the program without knowing the price tag of the new technology, a watchdog official [...]
Statement of Scott Horowitz Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Mission Directorate National Aeronautics and Space Administration Before the Committee on Science U.S. House of Representatives Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to outline NASA’s progress in developing Orion, the Nation’s next-generation piloted spacecraft. In [...]
Today (Sept 28, 2006) at 2pm the House Committee on Science will hold a hearing to review the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) efforts to develop the Crew Exploration Vehicle, now dubbed “Orion.” As laid out in the President’s Vision for Space Exploration, Orion will carry humans to the International Space Station (ISS), the [...]
Shares of Orbital Sciences Corp. closed at a 52-week high last week as the space and defense contractor continued to bolster its relationship with NASA. The Sterling, Va., company’s stock closed at $19.93 Thursday after a month of big contract wins, including a piece of the $3.9 billion Orion spacecraft upgrade in partnership with Bethesda [...]
While the shuttle Atlantis crew wrapped up its space station construction flight, a fellow group of astronauts was busy working beneath the sea to prepare for future missions. As part of the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations, or NEEMO, astronauts live in a government-owned underwater habitat named Aquarius. The 20-year-old abode is located about five [...]
Story by Seth Borenstein. For the last 10 minutes, I’ve been trying to nuzzle the Orion space capsule up to the international space station to dock, but I keep drifting left, smack into a European lab. Then I look slightly past the flat-panel screen that displays my incompetence with the joystick, through the window and [...]
Lockheed Martin is getting a seven and a-half (M) million dollar Texas grant as it prepares to build the Orion (uh-RY’-un) crew exploration vehicle.Gov. Rick Perry made the announcement today at Space Center Houston as part of an effort that’s expected to include one-thousand new jobs. NASA two weeks ago announced Lockheed Martin won the [...]
A panel of scientists strongly endorsed NASA’s plans to return to the moon, saying in a report Tuesday that lunar exploration will open the way toward broader studies of the Earth and solar system.”The moon is priceless to planetary scientists,” declared the special National Research Council panel of the National Academy of Sciences. The scientists [...]
Orion spaceship prime contractor Lockheed Martin, its Ares I launcher’s first stage provider Alliant Techsystems (ATK) and engine developer Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne have teamed to compete to supply the crew vehicle booster’s upper stage. ATK – already responsible for the Ares I first stage hardware including the interface and separation with the upper stage [...]
NASA has selected The Boeing Company, Huntington Beach, Calif., to support the design and development of a lunar direct return-capable heat shield for the Orion crew exploration vehicle. The hybrid firm fixed-price and cost-plus-fixed-fee contract has a 16-month period of performance, with a maximum value of approximately $14 million, including all priced options. The heat [...]