NASA Orion Spaceship Blog

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. 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.  Read more

Brushing aside the threat of a presidential veto, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an over-budget spending measure July 26 that would provide $17.6 billion for NASA for 2008.

The $53.8 billion Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations bill (H.R. 3093) passed by a vote of 281 to 142 following two days of debate that left the NASA portion largely unchanged from the amount that had emerged from the House Appropriations Committee two weeks earlier.  Read more

NASA Ames Research Center will host a news briefing at 1 p.m. PDT Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2007, to provide updates on NASA’s Constellation Program.

Constellation is developing the Orion spacecraft and Ares rockets to support an American return to the moon by 2020. The Orion spacecraft will carry astronauts to the International Space Station by 2015, and support missions to the moon, Mars and beyond.

NASA Ames leads the Orion Thermal Protection System Advanced Development Project that is producing a heat shield to protect Orion during its return from low-Earth orbit or the moon.   Read more

Alliant Techsystems Inc. has been named to a team with a $70 million contract to build an emergency propulsion system for the next-generation spacecraft Orion that would allow the crew to separate from the rest of the craft in the event of an emergency.

The contract will create 50 jobs in Maryland, most of them at the company’s plant in Elkton but also some in Baltimore and Cumberland.   Read more

At least twice, astronauts were allowed to fly after flight surgeons and other astronauts warned they were so drunk they posed a flight-safety risk, an aviation weekly reported Thursday, citing a special panel studying astronaut health.

The independent panel found “heavy use of alcohol” before launch, according to Aviation Week & Space Technology, which reported the finding on its Web site.

The alcohol use by astronauts was within the standard 12-hour “bottle-to-throttle” rule applied to NASA flight crew members, Aviation Week said. The panel was created following the arrest in February of former space shuttle flier Lisa Nowak, who was implicated in a love triangle.  Read more

An international aerospace company hopes NASA work will lead to a larger presence in Huntsville and the chance to put the Ares I rocket on course after its launch.

BAE Systems has proposed to NASA that its team of aerospace contractors - including the United Space Alliance, Harris Corp., Goodrich Corp., General Dynamics, Wyle Laboratories and numerous small businesses - build the Ares I crew launch vehicle instrument unit.

Often called the brains of a rocket, instrument units guide launch vehicles on their paths into space. For Ares, NASA managers decided the advanced guidance, navigation and control systems would be placed between the upper stage and the Orion crew capsule.   Read more

It has long been a complaint of space advocates that presidential candidates spend little or no time discussing their space policy positions—if, in fact, they have bothered to develop any positions on the subject. Space is near the bottom of the list of topics of interest to the electorate in general, and one that is not a swing issue for all but a small handful of voters. It is also rarely a partisan issue, making it difficult for space policy to become more ammunition in the continuous battles between Republicans and Democrats. Thus, even in the current campaign—which is shaping up to be the longest and perhaps the most contentious in US history—there’s scant attention paid to space.  Read more

The engineers over at Pratt & Whitney must be having a blast these days.

The company’s Rocketdyne division has just won a $1.2 billion contract to design, develop and test NASA’s new version of what propelled Apollo astronauts to the moon in the 60s and 70s.

The J-2X engine is a key element for the space agency’s plan to return men to the moon by 2020. NASA will use the rockets to help set up a cozy outpost that could accommodate moon trekkers for six months at a time.

This article also includes video simulations.  Read more

On Monday, July 16, 2007, NASA awarded Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne a contract to build the J-2X engines for the Ares launch vehicles. Through the Constellation program, Ares will launch the next-generation of astronauts aboard Orion.

The Ares I rocket will consist of a single five-segment solid-fueled rocket (for the first stage) and a single liquid-fueled rocket powered by a J-2X engine (for the second stage).

NASA awarded PWR, a company with United Technologies, the cost-plus $1.2 billion contract on a sole-source basis—meaning that no other company was able to meet the contract requirements.  Read more

To catch up on the lingo and progress of the new space race, follow these notes.

Substitute the ARES I and ARES V launch rockets for the Saturn V.

Replace the Apollo capsule with what’s called the Orion crew vehicle.

And put NASA Langley Research Center in a position to use its long history of aeronautics testing and structure and materials research to help get astronauts back to the moon safely - and even to live there for extended periods.

In the past year and a half at Langley, old facilities developed for airplane and jet testing have found new roles testing the aerodynamics and capabilities of new space vehicles.   Read more