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.

Orion spaceship prime contractor Lockheed Martin, its Ares I launcher’s first stage provider Alliant Techsystems (ATK) and engine developer Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne have teamed to compete to supply the crew vehicle booster’s upper stage.

ATK – already responsible for the Ares I first stage hardware including the interface and separation with the upper stage – is leading the team. The upper stage production contract request for proposals is expected in February next year and should be placed in the third quarter.

For the upper stage bid Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne is responsible for the liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen J-2x engine and related upper stage interfaces. Lockheed is providing the avionics for the April 2009 Ares I-1 test flight and has the capability to produce the upper stage cryogenic tanks.

On 12 September NASA published its $2 million Ares I upper stage severance system contract synopsis. With a draft request for proposal (RFP) expected around 19 September and an industry briefing on 21 September the final RFP should be published by NASA Glenn Research Center in mid-October.

NASA internal planning, official’s comments and contractor expectations suggest the much touted goal of manned flights of new crew vehicle Orion before 2014 are unrealistic

NASA will fail to meet its goal of flying manned Orion missions before 2014, as the first delay emerges for the new spaceship’s development timetable just a week after its prime contractor, Lockheed Martin Space Systems, was selected.

NASA administrator Michael Griffin had wanted Orion’s development accelerated because the four-year gap between the Space Shuttle’s 2010 retirement and the new spacecraft’s planned 2014 operational debut was deemed unacceptable. The prime contractor selection process was even adjusted for changes introduced by NASA to accelerate Orion.

However NASA internal planning documents obtained by Flight International, and recent comments by Constellation and Lockheed Martin programme officials, reveal that this goal is unrealistic.

In an interview with Flight International last week, Lockheed Project Orion business development manager Patrick McKenzie said that the “requirements review (SRR) should slip into the first quarter of next year”. NASA’s plan had been for Orion’s SRR to occur in the fourth quarter of 2006.

While McKenzie was sure his company could deliver the Orion for a 2012 manned flight, at the 31 August contractor selection announcement Project Orion office manager Caris Hatfeld said “a full and final” Ares I test was unlikely before 2012 in order to complete the launcher’s upper stage and its Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne J-2X engine. That 2012 test flight will not be manned.

The leaked documents and corroborating NASA sources describe a timetable where the Ares I-1 test would occur in 2009, followed by the 2012 flight, which is now designated the Orbital Flight Test (OFT)-1. NASA had spoken of Atmospheric Demonstration Flight Tests (ADFT), but this designation seems to have been abandoned. The first manned flight is OFT-3, which is planned for April, May or June 2014.

When asked about Hatfield’s and Constellation programme manager Jeffrey Hanley’s ambiguous 31 August comments about testing, NASA said: “The test programme is still in review, which is why [Hatfield and Hanley] were circumspect. We need to see how the new prime contractor’s detailed schedule fits with rest of the programme test plan.”

The leaked NASA documents have the system design review, which follows SRR, by May 2007 the preliminary design review by March 2008, and the critical design review in the second quarter of 2009.

Officials at Lockheed Martin say the Orion crew vehicle, NASA’s Moon-bound successor to the space shuttle, will combine retro-1960s and cutting-edge aerospace technologies.

The Apollo program, which sent a dozen men to the Moon, ended in 1972. It’s so long ago that fewer than half of all Americans are old enough to have watched one of its missions on live TV. Yet some of the technology behind Apollo is about to be brought out of retirement for NASA’s return to the Moon, scheduled for 2020.

The agency’s new system for traveling to Earth orbit, and later to the Moon and Mars, dubbed The Constellation Program, essentially duplicates the Moon mission technologies proposed by Wernher von Braun in the late 1950s and used in the Apollo program. For instance, it includes a multistage rocket similar to Apollo’s Saturn V, a crew vehicle similar to the Apollo command module, and a lunar lander directly based on the Apollo lander.

Last month, NASA chose aerospace giant Lockheed Martin to build the crew vehicle, called Orion. The craft’s cone-shaped crew module and cylindrical service module might have just arrived from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum–except they’re a bit larger than the Apollo versions, carrying four to six crew members instead of three.

Yet, according to Lockheed Martin officials, Orion will make the Apollo craft look like a Model T. Orion’s reentry system, for example, will incorporate knowledge gleaned from Lockheed’s recent Genesis and Stardust missions, which retrieved materials from comets. What’s more, the avionics software and equipment will be based on systems used in the newest passenger jets; and a new abort system will carry astronauts away from the main rockets in case of a Challenger-like launch disaster.

Patrick McKenzie is business development manager for the Orion project at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver, CO. He talked with Technology Review on September 7 about the technologies–old and new–going into Orion.

Technology Review: What did aerospace engineers learn from Apollo that can be applied in the Orion project? And why does your design look so similar, at least superficially, to the Apollo command module and service module?

Patrick McKenzie: One of the most enduring things that Apollo got right was the aerodynamic shape of the capsule–which also happens to be the most visible element. One of the reasons NASA chose to go with the Apollo-type shape is the proven safety database that goes along with that. When you look at alternatives like lifting-body designs–space airplanes like the Shuttle–they provide things like additional cross-range [the ability to steer to different landing sites], but you are not able to fly them safely in the event that a control system goes offline. A ballistic reentry system like a capsule can return the crew safely in the event of a fault. But virtually everything else about this capsule is new technology–not necessarily bleeding-edge, but developed after Apollo.

TR: What are some of the most important new technologies, in your opinion?

PM: One of the major technology applications that is clearly going to be different with Orion is the automated rendezvous and docking capability. Orion will need to dock with the International Space Station and with the Earth Departure Stage [the rocket that will accelerate Orion out of Earth orbit to the Moon]. The Shuttle is manually docked, and Apollo obviously wasn’t automated. Orion will have manual override capability, but the vast majority of the time, there should be no need for a crew member to intervene.

TR: I understand that Orion will have a new type of heat shield for reentry into Earth’s atmosphere.

PM: The idea is pretty much the same as with Apollo, but there will be a new design and new materials that provide more robust protection. That’s important because with vehicles coming back from the Moon, or particularly from Mars, the reentry velocities are going to be a lot higher [than with spacecraft in low-Earth orbit]. We are looking at heat-shield materials like PICA [phenolic impregnated carbon ablator] and SLA [a cork-based ablative material] that Lockheed has proven on the Genesis and Stardust deep-space sample return missions.

Another thing that’s going to be new is “skip reentry,” which we are going to be doing routinely. That’s where you bounce off the atmosphere and come back in again, which gives you the ability to touch down on land, as opposed to the Apollo landings in the ocean. That provides an extra measure of safety and enhances the reusability of the system. Of course, we’re also looking at upgraded landing-impact systems. You still come down on parachutes, like Apollo did, then you deploy airbags or fire retrorockets, similar to what the Russian Soyuz vehicle does, to slow down the vehicle for a safe landing.

TR: What will conditions be like inside the crew module?

PM: Apollo could carry only three people, and they had very tight living conditions. The Orion crew module will have twice the volume: 361 cubic feet per crew member. Four crew can go back and forth to the Moon, and on flights to the International Space Station we could accommodate up to six crew. Also, the crew module will be able to stay in orbit around the Moon in a fully autonomous mode, so all four crew members could go down to the surface, for potentially long-duration stays.

TR: For Apollo, NASA designed an abort system to carry the command module away from the Saturn V rocket in the event of a launch emergency. Such an abort system might have saved the Challenger astronauts, but unfortunately the Space Shuttle doesn’t have one. What’s being planned for Orion?

PM: It’s the same kind of idea as with Apollo. One of the particular advantages of the capsule configuration over the Space Shuttle is the fact that we aren’t side-mounted. On the Shuttle, both the solid rocket boosters and the external fuel tank are right up against the belly of the vehicle, and there is no way to separate the crew from those in an emergency. Orion will sit on top of the Ares I launch vehicle in the same fashion as Apollo, so that if there’s any kind of issue with the rocket below, the advanced launch abort rockets on the tower above the crew module are fully capable of accelerating away from the Ares and getting the crew into a safe situation, with parachutes for landing.

TR: The old mechanical cockpit systems in the Space Shuttle were recently replaced with a modern “glass cockpit” design, with fully electronic displays and controls. I assume that technology will go into Orion as well?

PM: The avionics systems on board are going to be light-years ahead of where Apollo was. Not only will we have what you called the glass cockpit, but the other key element is “dual fault tolerance.” That means that with the critical systems being built into Orion, you could have two failures in the same system and still fly safely. The system that our teammate Honeywell is working on is based on the avionics architecture of the Boeing 787, which is also dual-fault tolerant. The systems constantly monitor one another, and if one system has a problem, another one automatically takes over. It adds some additional weight and complexity to the vehicle, but it provides a much greater margin of safety on these very dangerous space missions.

TR: The Space Shuttle is due to be retired in 2010, and the first crewed test flights for the Constellation Program–or at least the Ares rocket with Orion on top–are planned for 2014. What will be the hardest technology challenges as you try to hold to that schedule?

PM: Typically, the avionics software development ends up being a critical path element. The RCS engines, derivatives of the Shuttle’s RCS engines, are another [Reaction Control System–the small side-mounted rockets used for attitude control and steering. The Shuttle’s RCS engines were themselves derived from Apollo. -eds.] So it comes down to software and propulsion. We’re aware of those critical-path issues and working with NASA to address them early. We’d like to close the gap after the Shuttle’s retirement and skinny the schedule down to test launches in 2012 or even sooner. But the Ares I launch vehicle development process has to come together along with Orion.

TR: From President Kennedy’s May 1961 speech announcing the goal of landing on the Moon to the actual Apollo 11 landing in July 1969, a little more than eight years passed. Today NASA says it’s going to take at least 14 years to do the same thing. Why?

PM: The Orion part of the project would probably be capable of lunar missions sooner than 2020. That being said, you’re also going to need to develop a lunar lander, an Earth-departure stage, and a lift vehicle [the Ares I and Ares V]. Because NASA’s budget in this day and age is a much smaller percentage of the budget of the nation than it was in the Apollo era, we have to “go as you can pay,” as NASA administrator [Michael] Griffin puts it. The initial budget priority is on developing Ares I and Orion. We will not be able to do development on the lunar lander, the EDS, and all the elements of Ares V in parallel.

TR: Why do you think Lockheed Martin’s proposal for the Orion contract won out over Northrop Grumman’s? Was Lockheed offering superior technology?

PM: I’m extremely proud of the team and what they accomplished with the technical concept we delivered to NASA. But the requirements are still in the process of changing, and all of the bidders actually had to deal with a diameter change [in the Orion capsule] halfway through the process, from 5.5 meters down to 5 meters. With NASA delivering so many things to us as requirements, the playing field was leveled somewhat.

When it gets right down to it, NASA is signing up for a relationship with an industrial partner that’s going to last a couple of decades. They wanted to know that it would be a happy marriage, where the spirit of partnership was in real evidence. During Phase I [when NASA paid several bidders to develop designs for Orion], we took the initiative to make sure our project office was co-located in Houston, which made it easy for them to participate in all of our control board meetings and other important events over and above the typical bimonthly reviews. We’ve got a significant workforce at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans [where the Shuttle’s external tanks are put together]; we made a decision early on to do final assembly and checkout at Kennedy Space Center; we’re going to be doing engine testing at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi [NASA’s primary rocket propulsion test site]. I think NASA has appreciated that.

From Radio Iowa:  NASA’s unveiled plans for its new space vehicle, called Orion, and an Iowa-born astronaut says he’s itching to be first in line to fly it. Burlington native Jim Kelly has logged more than 38-hundred flight hours in 35 types of aircraft, including piloting the space shuttle Discovery — twice.

The 41-year-old Kelly is speaking at several eastern Iowa schools this week and will escort his mother to her 50th class reunion at Muscatine High.