Orion Medical Blog

NASA has stopped developing the 274,000lb-thrust (1,220kN) J-2XD engine version for its Ares I crew launch vehicle (CLV) and will use its 294,000lb-thrust J-2X powerplant for the CLV and the Ares V cargo launch vehicle upper stages.

The liquid-oxygen, liquid-hydrogen-fuelled J-2X, named after the Apollo programme upper-stage J-2 engine, will start 133s into the flight at an altitude of 194,000ft (59,000m) and will have a mass of about 2,450kg (5,400lb). Every element of the original powerplant’s design will be altered to achieve the higher Ares launchers’ thrust needs.

To ensure the required 448s specific impulse, the engine will also use a version of the NASA/Lockheed Martin X-33 advanced technology demonstrator’s J-2S engine’s turbopump. That will be tested in October as part of the J-2X powerpack at NASA’s Stennis Space Center. Flight revealed this parallel development last year and now only the J-2X will be available from 2013. Read more

The cost of flying to the international space station aboard a Russian Soyuz spaceship is up from about $25 million earlier this year to about $30 million (€22 million) to $40 million (€29 million) for trips planned in 2008 and 2009.

“It’s mostly because of the fallen dollar,” Eric Anderson, president and CEO of Space Adventures, the sole company to broker trips with Russia’s space agency, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. Read more

NASA welcomes a vote of support for its future space exploration plans from the nation’s largest organization of doctors. The American Medical Association recently passed a resolution in support of human space travel, citing “potential future benefits to medicine and advances in patient care.”

The resolution passed in a unanimous vote at the AMA’s annual meeting of its House of Delegates, held in June in Chicago. The AMA also reaffirmed support for medical research on the space shuttle and International Space Station.

NASA’s space exploration programs have played a role in key advancements in medical science, from diagnostics to telemedicine to a space shuttle-derived heart pump.

“We’re pleased the nation’s doctors recognize the value of what we do in space to improve the quality of life on Earth,” said Scott “Doc” Horowitz, NASA’s associate administrator for Exploration Systems. “To understand the universe, we also have to understand how our own bodies and minds hold up to the rigors of spaceflight. Improved medical knowledge and innovative medical technology are certain to come from that.”

Long-duration spaceflight, such as a mission on the space station or to a future moon outpost, offers opportunities to study issues common to spacefaring astronauts and Earth-bound patients. Astronauts currently aboard the space station are participating in experiments on sleep, nutrition, the immune system and isolation and confinement. NASA researchers also are working to improve measures to counter the loss of bone mineral density and muscle strength, problems faced by astronauts in microgravity as well as patients on prolonged bed rest.

Flight can reveal NASA’s draft plans for its Constellation programme’s Lunar Lander team, as the US space agency prepares for a lessons-learned meeting with a dozen retired Apollo Lunar Module engineers on 20 July.The engineers worked on the Apollo Lunar Module reliability and maintainability team for its prime contractor Grumman, now known as Northrop Grumman, and the 20 July technical interchange meeting (TIM) is the latest in a series the company and agency have held since late 2006.Meanwhile NASA started earlier this year to recruit for its own Constellation Lunar Lander project office.In the draft roadmap obtained by Flight, that office’s intial team should now be assembled and its preliminary Lander design is expected to take up to nine months to develop. A baseline Lander design, referred to as the Lunar Surface Access Module, was proposed under the 2005 NASA Exploration Systems Architecture Study report, on which Constellation is based.However, despite that and five subsequent crew and cargo lander concepts from across NASA’s centres, the project office is now undertaking a Lunar Design Analysis Cycle (LDAC)-1 for the Constellation Lander, which could be called Artemis. This will be completed at the end of this month. Then LDAC-2 will start and NASA plans independent reviews of its work at the end of LDAC-3 in October. Ths will involve the NASA Engineeering and Safety Center, the agency’s Independent Program Assessment Office and its Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation. This will lead to an updated baseline design by mid-February 2008. Industry input may not occur until April next year, by which time a draft Lander system requirements document (SRD) will be completed. After the industry comments are received the SRD will be revised.”In fiscal year 2009 [the project office will] have a vehicle requirements review [and] baseline requirements [review],” says NASA. Fiscal 2009 runs from October 2008 through September 2009.  Read more

NASA selected California-based Pratt&Whitney Rocketdyne Inc., Monday to develop the upper-stage engine for the rockets intended to succeed the space shuttle and carry American explorers back to the moon.

The $1.2 billion contract covers design, development and testing of the J-2X engine intended to furnish propulsion for the second stage of NASA’s Ares I crew launch and Ares V heavy lift cargo launch vehicles.

An earlier and less powerful version of the same rocket engine provided propulsion for the second and third stages of the Apollo Saturn V moon rockets of the 1960s and 1970s.  Read more

The U.S. space program is veering toward an ominous black hole with the shuttle era set to end in 2010 and a replacement system still about seven years from being ready for launch. The gap will make NASA more vulnerable to funding cuts as federal budget woes mount in the years after the shuttles’ exit.

But NASA’s pain will be the private sector’s gain as the agency seeks to share its cost burden by investing more in private industry space efforts. Helping private companies develop rockets and crew capsules for missions that the shuttles currently perform will help free NASA to concentrate more fully on its goals of returning men to the moon and eventually sending a manned mission to Mars.  Read more

There’s good news in the congressional warfare over NASA’s budget:

Thanks to hard pushing by U.S. Rep. Dave Weldon, the House Appropriations Committee has restored $1.3 billion that had been cut from NASA’s fiscal year 2008 budget.

The money, which would boost NASA funding to $17.6 billion, still has to pass the full House and be reconciled with a Senate bill that gives the agency slightly less.  Read more

The Lockheed Martin Orion spacecraft has received a new set of refined baseline targets from NASA, concentrating on ensuring Orion can achieve ISS mission roles, as the vehicle edges closer to using up all of its reserve and weight growth allowances.

Orion itself is being refined, in order to ease some of the pressure on the capabilities of its taxi to orbit, the Ares I Crew Launch Vehicle, which itself is heading closer to the Ares I-X test launch in 2009.   Read more

Scott “Doc” Horowitz, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration systems since late 2005, plans to step down this fall.

NASA spokeswoman Beth Dickey confirmed July 11 that Horowitz had informed colleagues that afternoon of his intent to resign on or around Oct. 1. She had no immediate information on a successor.  Read more

As head of NASA’s $3.4 billion Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, Horowitz is in charge of the U.S. space agency’s efforts to replace the space shuttle fleet with the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle and Ares I rocket.  Read more

Rocket propulsion specialist Aerojet has test fired a large-scale controllable solid rocket motor, demonstrating a propulsion capability that could be used for flight control on NASA’s Orion crew exploration vehicle.  Read more