NASA is studying a variant of its planned Ares 5 heavy-lift rocket that would enable an Apollo 8-like trip around the Moon in the 2015 time frame, a top U.S. space agency official told reporters Jan. 25. Scott Horowitz, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration systems, said he asked engineers at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight [...]
Last week, NASA’s Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD), Scott Horowitz, sat down with reporters to discuss the Ares 1 and Orion programs. The impetus for this briefing, according to Horowitz, were recent stories – of varying accuracy – regarding weight and performance issues. Read more
Jackson, a NASA senior research engineer, has studied materials, structural designs that can better absorb energy, and crash simulations for 25 years — first for the Army and now for NASA. She works at what is now the Landing Impact Research at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.Recently she shared some of what she [...]
A new NASA presentation has revealed a fascinating insight into Constellation’s evaluations of the Launch Abort System (LAS) that will be used to save the crew of Orion, in the event of a serious failure of the Ares I launch vehicle.With alternative concepts, including a hand drawn Service Module Abort Motor concept by NASA head [...]
A new race for the moon is underway, with countries around the globe preparing to return man to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972.India, the US, China, Russia, and even the UK are developing and finessing programmes for a moon landing. Many of these plans are in the early stages, but in [...]
Cape Canaveral, Fla. – NASA’s Kennedy Space Center will host a ceremony at 10:30 a.m. Jan. 30 to commemorate the transition of the historic Operations and Checkout Building high bay for use by the Constellation Program. Originally built to process space vehicles in the Apollo era, the building will serve as the final assembly facility [...]
This week NASA is to hold an industry day and interviews for potential Ares I upper-stage constructors. The first design analysis cycle (DAC-1) was completed last month with key changes to the booster that will launch its Orion crew exploration vehicle, and which consists of a solid rocket booster (SRB) first stage and cryogenic upper [...]
NASA has renewed its commitment to build spaceship and rocket components in New Orleans. The nation’s space agency has not given up on its Michoud Assembly Facility on the city’s east side, and in fact sees it as an opportunity to help the city recover from Hurricane Katrina. Read more
NASA’s Vision for Space Exploration calls for robots and humans to return to the moon, Mars and beyond. And NASA Ames’ innovative partnerships with industry and academia will ensure cost-effective development of the breakthrough technologies needed. Responding to a call from the NASA Headquarters’ Innovative Partnerships Program (IPP), Ames and its collaborators recently submitted eight [...]
The NASA press conference last month on lunar exploration was in reality the announcement of a single major program decision, along with a list of categories of reasons for the lunar program itself, and a set of slides showing a sample of results from background concept studies which have been underway for over two years. [...]