NASA Orion Spaceship Blog

An American astronaut will run this year’s Boston Marathon on board the International Space Station.Sunita Williams, 41, a US Navy commander, will be tied to a treadmill to combat the effect of weightlessness.

She qualified for a place by finishing last year’s Houston Marathon in three hours 29 minutes and 57 seconds.

But she blasted off on board the Discovery space shuttle in December, prompting her decision to try to run the race in space on 16 April.

“I consider it a huge honour to qualify, and I didn’t want my qualification to expire without giving it a shot,” Ms Williams told the race organisers, the Boston Athletics Association (BAA). Read more

Space industry managers and labor leaders gave starkly contrasting views of Kennedy Space Center’s future during a Senate hearing Wednesday.

The impact of a four- or five-year absence of manned launches from Cape Canaveral could be devastating, said Johnny Walker, a representative of more than 2,500 union members employed at the space center.  Read more

Aero-News has learned some very heavy hitters will vie for a contract to produce the upper stage for the Ares I crew launch vehicle, NASA’s first new human-rated launch vehicle since the space shuttle. The space agency issued its request for proposal Friday for the Ares I launch vehicle upper stage element, which will transport the Orion crew exploration vehicle to low Earth orbit.

On Wednesday, Boeing Integrated Defense Systems announced it will submit an RFP for the upper stage, and that the company will lead a supplier team comprised of:  Read more

Boeing’s bid to win work in New Orleans on NASA’s next space exploration program will be joined by a team of eight suppliers — including Northrop Grumman — that would work with the aerospace company.

NASA will award what’s expected to be a multibillion-dollar contract in late August, with Boeing’s key competition being a team of Alliant Techsystems Thiokol, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne and Lockheed Martin, which currently produces space shuttle components at the 832-acre Michoud facility.

This document contains an integrated snapshot of Space Shuttle, Soyuz, Progress, ATV, HTV, COTS (RpK and SpaceX), Ares 1, and Orion flights between 2007 and 2015. This document also shows key milestones for the development of Orion and Ares 1 systems as well as ISS completion and staffing.   Read more

Statement of John Karas: Senate Hearing: Transitioning to a Next Generation Human Space Flight System.

Mr. John Karas
Vice President, Space Exploration Lockheed Martin

Testimony of
Mr. John Karas, Vice President and General Manager, Human Spaceflight, Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company
Before the Subcommittee on Space, Aeronautics and Related Sciences
Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation
U.S. Senate

Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, Sen. Hutchison and distinguished Committee Members.

I am honored to appear before you today to discuss a critical process of transition that lies before us in the next several years.  We should all work together to understand the impact that such a transition will have on key NASA Centers, their employees, their contractors and their communities.  Our collective skill in negotiating that transition will determine whether or not America retains its hard-earned mantle of leadership in space science and exploration.

There is a concern that budget pressures may threaten our ability to execute a smooth and timely transition from Space Shuttle operations to a fully developed system of new launch and exploration vehicles.  If key schedule milestones are to be met, it is important that all of us in industry and in the government reach agreement on a number of  issues.  Many of these issues are a product of the tension between long-term budget uncertainties and program technical, schedule, and cost performance.  Read more

My name is Carolyn Bushman. I teach at Wendover High School, Utah’s only NASA Explorer School. Wendover has 180 7-12 grade students. Last year I had the opportunity of taking students to the Wallops Fight Facility to see their experiment fly on an Orion Rocket. I met Pamela Ghaffarian of Franke Park Elementary, Multiage Classroom and she told me how NASA Watch had helped get her students to Wallops (see “Fix A NASA Error: Help These Kids See Their Experiment Reach Space”)

Well this year I’m facing a similar dilemma. Due to cut backs the sub-sem is no longer happening, but the NES brought my attention to a new opportunity of having an experiment flown out of New Mexico. My students submitted an experiment and got it accepted.   Read more

NASA has chosen Glenn Research Center’s Space Power Facility in Sandusky, Ohio, to perform integrated environmental testing of the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), the agency announced March 19.

The tests will simulate environmental conditions such as those the Orion will experience during launch, in-orbit operations and re-entry. Thermal, acoustic and mechanical vibration and electromagnetic compatibility testing will be conducted on Orion’s full assembly.

The launch abort system, crew module, service module and spacecraft adapter also will be tested, NASA said. The successor to the space shuttle, the Orion is intended to transport astronauts to Earth orbit, the moon and beyond.  Read more

In labs at Johnson Space Center, away from the buzz about NASA’s new spaceship and its new missions to the moon and Mars, a group of engineers are plodding away at another piece of the puzzle: spacesuits.Astronaut apparel has evolved over the decades from Mercury’s aluminum foil-looking outfits to the bulky, 275-pound whites now used on jaunts outside the space station. While it’s too early in the process to know how the new suits will look, the space agency is hoping to make new suits both high-tech and low-maintenance.  Read more

Plans are underway to establish a permanent human presence on the moon by the year 2020.

Earth & Sky spoke with Pete Worden, Director of NASA’s Ames Research Center. We asked him why humanity should return to the moon.  Read more