NASA has awarded a contract extension worth up to $35 million to a subsidiary of Alliant Techsystems Inc. This is for work on the Orion spaceship program.

This is in addition to a $28 million contract awarded to ATK Thiokol for the development of booster rockets for Ares 1 – the vehicle used to launch the Orion spaceship.  The extension of the contract will focus on nozzle metal hardware and maintain design and engineering analysis for a systems review to be held during December of 2006.  The contract extension will also be used for an initial test launch of Ares 1 during 2009.

A U.S. scientist says human missions to Mars face technical challenges well beyond those faced during the exploration of the moon.

In two new papers, Donald Rapp, formerly with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, reviews the current state of our understanding of life support and radiation safety and concludes that significant additional research will be required before safe and affordable human missions to Mars can become a reality.

Rapp reviews the current state of the understanding of life support for human missions to Mars and concludes current plans for life support contain optimistic assumptions regarding the degree of recycling and reliability that can be achieved and the amount of mass that life support systems may require.

In his second paper, he compares and contrasts the levels of radiation shielding required for human missions to the moon and Mars and finds currently planned missions to both bodies are not without potentially serious radiation risks.

Both papers are published in the current issue of The Mars Journal, a peer reviewed, open-access journal focused on Mars science, exploration and policy.

We’ve reported on NASA’s problem with funding cuts a few times already this year, and there’s no sign of things getting better any time soon. Costly foreign wars and soaring budget deficits mean that every federal department has to tighten their belts, and budget overruns surrounding space technology mean that projects are coming under scrutiny by Congress and the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

First in the firing line is a planned weather monitoring satellite network, called Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R, or GOES-R. GOES-R was originally planned to cost around $6 billion, but recent estimates have put that figure at almost double, even though it is still in the planning stages. GOES-R is not planned to enter operation until 2014. Despite dropping certain sensors from the design, the GAO still wants an accurate estimate from NOAA on just how much it will cost. A prior NOAA project, the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS), has already been affected by cost overruns.

NOAA aren’t the only people in trouble. NASA’s proposed shuttle replacement, the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) is also under increased scrutiny from the House Science Committee, as NASA is having trouble accurately forcasting the exact cost of a return to the Moon when the project is so early in the planning stages. Although current estimates are around $230 billion, NASA’s proposals still have shortfalls from 2014-2020.

“I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion that we’re going to do this [CEV development] no matter what,” Bart Gordon, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said. “There is a point at which we might very well say, ‘This is too expensive. This is not working. Let’s stop, cut our losses.'”

Whether or not a return to the Moon will survive a change of leadership in Washington, DC remains to be seen. If only the CEV could be carried aloft by the soaring budget problems, we could get there next week.

Gov. Jeb Bush said Thursday he is optimistic that the 300 to 400 jobs created by Lockheed Martin’s decision to assemble NASA’s Orion spaceships at Kennedy Space Center will be the first of thousands of jobs tied to the space agency’s new moon-landing program.

Bush, in a rare visit to the Space Coast, joined about 140 government and industry officials Thursday at the Radisson at the Port hotel for a celebration of NASA’s decision to pick a contractor that plans to assemble the Orion crew transport craft at KSC. In the past, America’s manned spaceships were assembled somewhere else and shipped here for launch.

Bush last visited Brevard County on Dec. 14, 2005, to participate in a bill-signing event in Titusville, according to Kristy Campbell, his deputy press secretary.

Winning that work is a first step in preserving as many space jobs as possible after NASA retires its space shuttle fleet around 2010. Some predictions indicate the number of people employed at KSC could fall from 15,000 today to 10,000 or fewer. Economic development officials say landing as much work as possible on Orion and related projects is key to minimizing the impact of the shuttle’s retirement.

“If we sat and did nothing, we could be guaranteed tremendous economic losses,” Bush told a small group of reporters. “(Brevard) is the center of the new means by which to access space. Our expectation is it’ll be a growing industry.”

Orion should ultimately employ 2,500 to 3,000 workers at KSC by 2008 and likely through 2019, program manager Cleon Lacefield said. That does not count jobs created by the newly proposed Ares rockets that would launch crew and cargo on the moon trips.

The number also doesn’t count support jobs in fields that range from firefighting to security to accounting.

A congressional committee promised Thursday to scrutinize NASA and its spending as the agency proceeds with a program to take astronauts to the moon and Mars.

The space agency faces hidden costs by starting development of the spacecraft and rockets for the program without knowing the price tag of the new technology, a watchdog official warned Thursday in Washington at a hearing of the House Committee on Science.

“When you don’t abide by those particular principles _ which is not going beyond what your knowledge tells you _ then you do run into trouble,” said Allen Li, director of acquisition and sourcing management for the Government Accountability Office.

The committee held the hearing in response to a report the GAO released last July that raised concerns about the affordability of developing the Orion manned lunar vehicle and the Ares 1 and 5 rockets. The committee took no action but members promised to monitor NASA closely.

The report said that developing Orion, the rockets and robotic missions to the moon would cost $230 billion over two decades, and that those efforts likely would face a budget shortfall of more than $18 billion through 2025.

But Scott Horowitz, a NASA associate administrator, said he was confident the space agency would finish developing the spacecraft and rockets on time and within cost.

The price will be kept down because of the design simplicity of the spacecraft and rockets, which use technology from the Apollo era 40 years ago, Horowitz said.

Orion will cost $200 million a flight, said Horowitz, although Li said the figure wouldn’t be known accurately until 2008.

Horowitz stressed the importance of stable funding in keeping costs down. NASA wants to begin flying Orion with astronauts by 2014 and return to the moon no later than 2020.

“If you short-fund the program in the near term, you can guarantee that you will stretch it out and increase its costs in the long term,” Horowitz said.

NASA this month picked Lockheed Martin Corp. to build the manned lunar spaceship. The contract is worth $8.1 billion through 2019.

In response to the GAO report, NASA made some changes to limit its obligations to the projects if they don’t succeed, but Li said the space agency needs to go further.

Today (Sept 28, 2006) at 2pm the House Committee on Science will hold a hearing to review the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) efforts to develop the Crew Exploration Vehicle, now dubbed “Orion.”

As laid out in the President’s Vision for Space Exploration, Orion will carry humans to the International Space Station (ISS), the Moon, and beyond following the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2010. On August 31st, 2006, NASA selected Lockheed Martin as its industry partner for the development and production of Orion, signing a development and production contract worth, including all options, approximately $8.1 billion through 2019.

On Wednesday the 26th of July, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report critical of NASA’s contracting approach for the acquisition of Orion. The report, entitled “NASA: Long-Term Commitment to and Investment in Space Exploration Program Requires More Knowledge,” faults the agency for committing to a long-term contract for Orion before reaching an appropriate level of understanding of the design and risks of the program. Following discussions with GAO and the Science Committee, NASA revised its then pending contract with Lockheed Martin to partially address these concerns.

Specifically, the hearing will explore the following overarching questions:

1. What is NASA’s strategy for developing Orion?

2. Does NASA have the knowledge required to enter into a long-term development contract?

3. What steps can NASA take to ensure timely and cost-effective development of Orion?

Thursday September 28, 2006

Full Committee – Hearing

Implementing the Vision for Space Exploration: Development of the Crew Exploration Vehicle

2:00pm – 4:00pm

2318 Rayburn House Office Building

Witnesses

Dr. Scott J. Horowitz, Associate Administrator, Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, NASA

Mr. Allen Li, Director, Acquisition and Sourcing Management, Government Accountability Office

The hearing charter, which provides detailed background information on the hearing, will be available soon on the Science Committee website. Member opening statements and witness testimony will be posted to the website at the start of the hearing.

While the shuttle Atlantis crew wrapped up its space station construction flight, a fellow group of astronauts was busy working beneath the sea to prepare for future missions.

As part of the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations, or NEEMO, astronauts live in a government-owned underwater habitat named Aquarius. The 20-year-old abode is located about five miles off the coast of Key Largo in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

During their stay, the astronauts, all of whom are training for possible assignment to long-duration space station missions, donned diving gear to test spacewalking techniques NASA is developing for planned lunar expeditions. After the space station is finished and the shuttle fleet retired, NASA plans to begin flying a new capsule, called Orion, which will ferry crews to the moon.

NEEMO also is intended to test spacesuit components, communication techniques, navigation strategies, methods to retrieve geologic samples, lunar habitat construction techniques and remotely controlled robots.

“These results will allow our designers and engineers to improve designs of habitats, robots and spacesuits,” said NEEMO mission director Marc Reagan. “We will explore new challenges and learn to overcome the inherent difficulties of living and working on the moon.”

Magnus’ team is the 11th from NASA to train in Aquarius, which typically is occupied by marine biologists and other scientists studying coral reefs, oceanic changes and other undersea phenomena.

The habitat, which rests 62 feet below sea level, is supported by a buoy on the surface that provides power, life support and communications. Engineers oversee Aquarius operations around the clock via a shore-based mission control center. The habitat itself has about 400 square feet of living space and laboratory areas and is located next to deep coral reefs.

“It is a compact place and feels a bit bigger than the volume of the shuttle, but not by much,” said Magnus, who flew aboard the shuttle during Atlantis’ previous mission in October 2002.

Several former NEEMO crewmembers have gone on to space station assignments, including Michael Lopez-Alegria, the incoming station commander, and Peggy Whitson, who has flown one long-duration station mission and is training to command a second.

Story by Seth Borenstein.  For the last 10 minutes, I’ve been trying to nuzzle the Orion space capsule up to the international space station to dock, but I keep drifting left, smack into a European lab.

Then I look slightly past the flat-panel screen that displays my incompetence with the joystick, through the window and straight up. I see the moon. It’s filling the view and grabs my attention from the docking job at hand.

The moon is what this is all about.

I’m in a full-scale mock-up of Lockheed Martin Corp.’s Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle that’s supposed to replace the space shuttle fleet and eventually take astronauts back to the moon. The actual ship is still a few years away from being built, and it won’t fly until at least 2013.

Two weeks before my test drive, NASA awarded Lockheed Martin an $8 billion contract to build Orion, a capsule NASA refers to as “Apollo on steroids.” It’s the latest in a long line of planned next-generation spaceships for NASA, none of which has ever taken off.

Lockheed Martin built the mock-up to help understand the volume and geometry involved in the design and construction of the Orion. NASA has developed its own model, which is slightly different.

“It starts to give you an idea of the real size involved,” said Cleon Lacefield, Lockheed Martin’s vice president and the company’s Orion program manager. “It really comes up to be pretty spacious.”

Three other people are standing in the capsule and Marc Sommers, a Lockheed Martin avionics engineer, is sitting in the left-hand seat next to me, trying to get me to dock correctly.

This capsule is downright roomy. If the Apollo capsules were Volkswagen Beetles from the 1960s, cramped but useful, then Orion seems like a 1990s minivan, extended version. It’s good enough for a long road trip, which is pretty much what NASA envisions in a three-day one-way trip to the moon.

NASA Orion project manager Skip Hatfield said it was designed to be much more spacious per crew member than Apollo. Unlike Apollo, which had three astronauts, Orion will carry four astronauts to the moon, six for the much shorter hop to international space station.

So for the lunar trip, Orion will have about 95 cubic feet per astronaut, compared with 70 cubic feet per Apollo astronaut. Orion’s trip to the space station will be a little more crowded with each of the six astronauts getting 63 cubic feet.

It looks even roomier because there’s no other equipment inside the Orion capsule. While most of the gear will be stored below and behind the capsule interior, stuff has a way of accumulating inside a vehicle so Orion will get to seem more crowded, Hatfield said.

There are actually two connected simulators here. One is a standard-seat model with a lot of screens and the sounds of jets. The other, which I used, is offers no sounds and only one screen and a joystick a tad better than the run-of-the-mill video game. The ship doesn’t move, but it has a sense of realism because you are inside a large capsule in the prone position.

Before I get into position to simulate docking, Sommers and Hatfield tell me it’s easy. I say I’ve never flown a simulation successfully because of bad hand-eye coordination. Even an 8-year-old docked successfully when Lockheed Martin allowed families a sneak peak, Sommers said.

Once inside, I find myself in a reclining z-shape, sitting on my back with my thighs straight up, my calves horizontal and my head looking up at the screen.

Then I tried to dock. And failed. I started lined up in front of the docking ring and went astray – far astray almost leaving the space station environs. Sommers kept giving me tips and I kept moving the joystick wrong.

Maybe it’s because I can’t hear the thrusters in the simulator, Sommers offers as an excuse. That’s not it.

To my credit, I never actually crashed. After about 15 minutes of drifting away and inching back only to drift away again, I just gave up. I quit. It was humiliating and others were waiting to take this baby out for a spin – and probably laughing.

It’s just this spaceship needs a better driver.

Lockheed Martin is getting a seven and a-half (M) million dollar Texas grant as it prepares to build the Orion (uh-RY’-un) crew exploration vehicle.Gov. Rick Perry made the announcement today at Space Center Houston as part of an effort that’s expected to include one-thousand new jobs.

NASA two weeks ago announced Lockheed Martin won the multi (B) billion dollar contract to build the Orion manned lunar space craft.

NASA anticipates building eight of the reusable spaceships through 2019 — replacing the space shuttle.

The grant comes from the Texas Enterprise Fund.

Perry’s office says Lockheed Martin, through the Orion project in the Houston area, is expected to invest about 68 (M) million dollars in the Texas economy.

Bethesda, Maryland,-based Lockheed is the nation’s largest defense contractor.

A panel of scientists strongly endorsed NASA’s plans to return to the moon, saying in a report Tuesday that lunar exploration will open the way toward broader studies of the Earth and solar system.”The moon is priceless to planetary scientists,” declared the special National Research Council panel of the National Academy of Sciences.

The scientists were asked to evaluate and give guidance to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s plans for robotic and human exploration of the moon over the next two decades.

President Bush two years ago vowed to return astronauts to the moon and establish an “extended presence there” in preparation for exploring Mars. He called on NASA to devote $12 billion over five years for the beginning of the program with a goal of landing on the moon between 2015 and 2020, and eventually landing on Mars.

The Academy panel said the moon holds a deep geological record of early planetary evolution and provides great opportunities for a sustained program of both robotic and human exploration of space.

“Only by returning to the moon to carry out new scientific exploration can we hope to close the gaps in understanding and learn the secrets that the moon alone has kept for eons,” the 15-member panel said.

The committee was made up of academics, a journalist and retired members of private industry involved in space programs. The congressionally chartered Academy advises the government on scientific and technical matters.

The scientists urged NASA to stimulate lunar research along two programs: one for fundamental lunar research and the other focusing on analyzing lunar data to advance research elsewhere in the solar system.

Among the priorities the panel outlined were determining the composition and structure of the lunar interior, better understanding the lunar atmosphere, evaluating the moon’s potential as “an observation platform” for studying the Earth, the relationship of the sun and Earth, and broader astronomy and astrophysics.

The scientists said NASA should provide astronauts with the best possible technical systems for exploring the moon using both robotic, teleoperated systems and robot-assisted human exploration.

Tuesday’s report was described as interim, with a more detailed report to be released in mid-2007.

The federal space agency and space enthusiasts outside of NASA long have hungered for a return to the moon. Bush’s outline for exploration of the moon and later Mars represented the boldest space goal since President Kennedy called in the early 1960s for landing Americans on the moon, a goal that was accomplished in 1969.

Two weeks ago, NASA announced it had awarded Lockheed Martin Corp. the multibillion-dollar contract to build the Orion manned lunar space craft. NASA anticipates building eight of the reusable spaceships through 2019, replacing the space shuttle.