NASA Orion Spaceship Blog

NASA has repeatedly sent scale-sized versions of its planned Orion spaceship plummeting back to Earth in a series tests to pinpoint the best way to return future astronauts safely back to terra firma.

The drop tests, performed at NASA’s Virginia-based Langley Research Center, are just one of several technical milestones the Orion spacecraft and Ares rocket programs hit in recent weeks as the agency pushes ahead with plans for its space shuttle successor.  Read more

NASA mission managers will wait until early April to pick a new launch date for the space shuttle Atlantis pending additional repairs and checks of its hail-battered fuel tank, top agency officials said Wednesday.

The U.S. space agency is eyeing April 10 as the decision day on whether to press ahead with a possible mid-May launch for Atlantis or swap its damaged fuel tank with a new one, which would push the planned space shot to June.

“Our ultimate goal is to get the best tank that we can get ready to go fly,” William Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, told reporters in a Wednesday teleconference. “It looks like by about April 10 or so, we should have enough information.”   Read more

A Texas company has drawn up plans for a human expedition to the moon to seek the raw ingredients for what amounts to an orbiting gas station.

Under the plan, from Bill Stone of Austin’s Stone Aerospace Inc., a vanguard team of industrialists would explore Shackleton Crater at the moon’s South Pole to determine how much, if any, frozen water and other materials are beneath the lunar surface.  Read more

Kennedy Space Center Director Bill Parsons this morning asked for the Brevard County Commission’s support lobbying for increased NASA funding.

Parsons said another tight budget next year could lengthen the transition from the space shuttle to its successor, Orion, potentially costing Brevard space-related jobs.  Read more

NASA will likely shut down its Institute for Advanced Concepts, which funds research into futuristic – and often far-out – ideas in spaceflight and aeronautics, officials say. The controversial move highlights the budgetary pressures the agency is facing as it struggles to retire the space shuttles by 2010 and develop their replacement.

The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) was established to “give an opportunity for people outside of NASA to develop really revolutionary and creative concepts for future aeronautics and space missions”, says Robert Cassanova, who has served as the institute’s director since its inception in February 1998.  Read more

ASA administrator Michael Griffin has warned the US Congress that he expects the four-year US manned spaceflight capability gap between the Space Shuttle’s 2010 retirement and its replacement’s first launch to grow, unless the agency’s fiscal year 2008 exploration systems budget is fully funded.

Cuts imposed in February by Congress on the FY2007 budget have already prompted Griffin to predict a six-month delay for the maiden flight of NASA’s four-person Orion crew exploration vehicle, which was planned for September 2014.  Read more

NASA is undergoing what is arguably its biggest transition since the end of the Apollo program and the beginning of the Shuttle program over 30 years ago. Now it’s the Shuttle’s turn to go the way of the Saturn 5 rocket and Apollo spacecraft, to be replaced by something that combines some elements of both of its predecessors. This makes the present as good a time as any to both look back at the Space Shuttle and look ahead to the new generation of spacecraft and launch vehicles, which Apogee Books does in capsule form—pardon the pun—with two of its latest pocket guides.  Read more

Among the actions NASA recommends in its fiscal 2007 operating plan is shutting down the Lunar Precursor and Robotic Program Office at Marshall Space Flight Center, where a whole generation of unmanned orbiters, rovers, hoppers and penetrators was under consideration as scouts for a human landing on the moon.

Management of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), a piggyback pair of impactors to be carried on the 2008 Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), will be pulled into NASA headquarters, but the rest will be dropped in keeping with the agency’s decision to focus on replacing the space shuttle with the Orion/Ares I stack.  Read more

At today’s final Commerce, Justice, Science (CJS) Appropriations Subcommittee hearing focused on innovation, Chairman Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) noted her concern for the future of NASA’s budget and the nation’s space program, pledging to fight again with Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) for a $1 billion increase to NASA’s top line. At today’s hearing, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin presented his priorities as the subcommittee considers President Bush’s FY 2008 budget requests.

“With almost no real growth in NASA’s budget, there is no margin for errors. If there are cost overruns, other NASA programs will suffer. There is simply too much pressure on NASA’s budget - now and in the future,” said Senator Mikulski. “The only way to reduce the pressure on the budget, and maintain a balanced space program, is to raise the top line for NASA.”

Senator Mikulski called for a bipartisan, bicameral space summit with the White House. She cited a similar meeting 17 years ago, with then President George W. Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle, which paved the way for the creation of the Mission to Planet Earth.  Read more

NASA Plum Brook Station has won a $63 million contract to test the Orion spacecraft, the spacecraft that will carry astronauts for NASA’s planned return to the moon.

Plans call for testing Orion at Plum Brook in 2011 or 2012. That’s a few years off, but Friday’s announcement provides good news about the future of NASA Plum Brook, Whitlow said.

Ninth District U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Toledo, one of the officials who announced the contract, said she’s pleased Plum Brook will play an important role in Orion.  Read more