Orion Medical Blog

Alliant Techsystems Inc., the only maker of reusable solid-rocket motors for U.S. space shuttles, won a $1.8 billion contract from NASA for the first stage of the Ares I rocket.

The new contract replaces a temporary agreement in place since last year. The award covers five ground static-test motors, two ground vibration-test articles and four flight-test stages and runs through Dec. 31, 2014, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said in a statement today.

The Ares I is the rocket that will lift the Orion spacecraft, which will replace the current shuttle fleet, into low Earth orbit. Alliant Chief Executive Officer Daniel Murphy said Aug. 2 he expected the award, and at the time he put the value at more than $1.5 billion.   Read more

NASA has issued a request for proposals for Ares I mobile launcher construction. Ares I is the rocket that will transport the Orion crew exploration vehicle and its crew and cargo to low Earth orbit. The mobile launcher proposals are due to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Sept. 6, 2007.

The request for proposals states the procurement approach for obtaining the mobile launcher system. The mobile launcher will be used as a platform to assemble, test and service Ares I in existing facilities, transport the rocket to the pad, and support launches. Read more

A new space shuttle tile inspection method devised by Ames Research Center that uses wireless scanners that relay information to a computer database is replacing manual inspection, NASA announced Aug. 7.

Technicians have used six new scanners to look for cracks and other imperfections in some of the 24,000 tiles that cover shuttle Endeavour, as the orbiter is prepared for launch from Kennedy Space Center Aug. 8 on mission STS-118.

In the past, workers at Kennedy visually analyzed tiles and measured dings and cracks with hand-held scales. The new method is faster and more accurate, NASA says. Data on the depth and volume of cracks, as well as their locations, are wirelessly transmitted to a computer database.  Read more

Discussing a recent medical review, NASA Administrator Mike Griffin said today he believes anecdotal allegations of alcohol abuse among some unnamed astronauts were “inflammatory” and not credible based on his own personal experience with the men and women who risk their lives on the high frontier. “I personally believe,” he said, “that at the end of the day, their charges will be determined to be either ancient or unfounded or both.” But in a wide-ranging interview with CBS News, Griffin said the allegations were serious enough to warrant a thorough review by NASA’s director of Safety and Mission Assurance and that if any alcohol-related incidents are confirmed, “the consequences will be severe.”  Read more

Even as space shuttle Endeavour awaited its scheduled Wednesday launch from pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center, NASA officials were showing off the future Monday a mile and a half away.

Pad 39B is where an Orion capsule perched on an Ares I rocket is supposed to launch in 2014, kicking off the Constellation program that will return man to the moon.

NASA’s aging shuttle fleet is not scheduled for retirement until September 2010, but the agency, worried about losing its skilled work force in the interim, has not waited to start the transition. The first test flight of an Ares rocket is scheduled for April 2009.  Read more

There are some reports and rumors circulating that NASA has decided to redesign the Orion spacecraft to land in water only – and not on land with airbags.

According to a short statement from NASA PAO to NASAWatch.com/SpaceRef.com – one corroborated with ESMD Deputy AA Doug Cooke): “NASA has not abandoned the concept of land re-entries. The decision has not been made.”   Read more

NASA’s Constellation Program – including the deployment of the Orion crew vehicle replacing the space shuttle – will first be assigned to International Space Station flights, then propel humans and cargo to the Moon. Expeditionary missions to Mars and beyond will follow.

But there’s ongoing discussion of mounting a piloted mission to an asteroid – a voyage by astronauts to a near-Earth object, termed NEO for short. These proponents feel certain of the scientific payoff from reaching, first-hand, an asteroid – perhaps even becoming able to exploit these chunks of celestial flotsam to further humankind’s plunge into the cosmos.

Space technologists argue that a NEO trip could be a valuable shakeout of people, equipment, and procedures prior to hurling astronauts beyond the Moon to the distant dunes of Mars.  Read more

When NASA’s redesigned spaceship of the future returns from the moon, Mars or beyond, it will need a heat shield tough enough to withstand an atmosphere hot enough to melt iron.

That where NASA Ames scientists come in. By fall, they hope to select two materials for their design that can stand up to 5,500 degrees Fahrenheit. Only Ames and the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston have instruments known as “arc jets” that can simulate the range of anticipated temperatures Orion would encounter upon re-entering Earth’s atmosphere.

“These are very complicated materials,” said James Reuther, leader of the Advanced Development Thermal Protection Systems Project at NASA Ames in Mountain View. “We’re doing everything we can to get there.”

NASA simulates extreme heat in its large arc jets, which resemble room-size blowtorches cooled by thousands of water lines, officials said.   Read more

NASA has chosen umbilical extra vehicular activity (EVA) as the space walk method for its Constellation programme’s Orion crew exploration vehicle.

During the Space Shuttle programme, tethered EVA space suits have had onboard all the air and power required for working in the Orbiter’s payload bay or assembling the International Space Station.

Umbilical EVAs mean the space suit will draw its air and power from the astronaut’s spacecraft, in future the Orion Command Module. The last NASA umbilical spacewalk was during the agency’s final Skylab mission, Skylab-4, in 1974.  Read more

Two firms look to boost production, tests in area

During the race to the moon, Huntsville companies were churning out Saturn rockets, instrument units and other space hardware like a Detroit automobile assembly line in overdrive.

In the Saturn era particularly, launch vehicle stages were built at Marshall Space Flight Center, and the rumble of rocket engines could be heard across the Tennessee Valley.

Today that type of aerospace work is dormant. A Marshall Apollo-era veteran and a young rocket entrepreneur are trying to change that by putting the nuts and bolts of rocket work back into Huntsville.

Al Reisz, president of Huntsville’s Reisz Engineering, and Tim Pickens, president and CEO of Madison-based Orion Propulsion, want to keep more of the manufacturing and test work in the Tennessee Valley.  Read more