NASA is making progress on developing what it calls its crew exploration vehicle. The craft replaces the shuttle and eventually will take man to the moon and Mars. It’s a big room with a long chamber with windows and 32 cameras. It was one of the more unusual show-and-tells from researchers at NASA Ames Thursday [...]
Dan Dumbacher, deputy director of the Exploration Launch Projects Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., helps manage and lead overall development and integration of the Ares I and Ares V launch vehicle systems. NASA’s Ares I is the launch vehicle that will transport the Orion crew exploration vehicle to space. Ares [...]
NASA is beginning detailed planning for the first round of flight tests for the Ares I Crew Launch Vehicle (CLV), with documentation – acquired by this site – showing the full outlines of the test flight objectives. The first flight, Ares I-1, will be a suborbital test of the booster with an inert fifth SRB [...]
NASA’s Orion crew vehicle’s smart cockpit will monitor the vehicle’s health, use synthetic, enhanced and virtual vision systems, have advanced on-screen symbology and may eventually employ a talking computer. The Lockheed Martin-built Orion will use a glass cockpit that is derived from Honeywell’s Boeing 787 flight deck technology. Orion’s cockpit computers will carry out routine [...]
NASA is extending a contract with ATK Thiokol of Brigham City, Utah, to continue developing the first stage for the Ares I crew launch vehicle.Ares I is the crew launch vehicle that will transport the Orion crew exploration vehicle, its crew or other small cargo payloads into low-Earth orbit. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration [...]
NASA has awarded a contract extension worth up to $35 million to a subsidiary of Alliant Techsystems Inc. This is for work on the Orion spaceship program. This is in addition to a $28 million contract awarded to ATK Thiokol for the development of booster rockets for Ares 1 – the vehicle used to launch [...]
A U.S. scientist says human missions to Mars face technical challenges well beyond those faced during the exploration of the moon. In two new papers, Donald Rapp, formerly with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, reviews the current state of our understanding of life support and radiation safety and concludes that significant additional research will be required [...]
We’ve reported on NASA’s problem with funding cuts a few times already this year, and there’s no sign of things getting better any time soon. Costly foreign wars and soaring budget deficits mean that every federal department has to tighten their belts, and budget overruns surrounding space technology mean that projects are coming under scrutiny [...]
Gov. Jeb Bush said Thursday he is optimistic that the 300 to 400 jobs created by Lockheed Martin’s decision to assemble NASA’s Orion spaceships at Kennedy Space Center will be the first of thousands of jobs tied to the space agency’s new moon-landing program. Bush, in a rare visit to the Space Coast, joined about [...]