tagged w/ Constellation Program
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WASHINGTON - NASA will delay the first manned flight of the new spacecraft designed to take humans back to the moon because of budget constraints, the agency's boss said Wednesday.
The craft, called the Orion, won't fly until early 2015, four to six months later than planned, NASA administrator Michael Griffin told lawmakers.
"We simply do not have the money available" to fly in 2014 as originally planned, he said.
The delay is the result of a $545 million difference between President Bush's request for the agency this year and the money Congress included in a spending bill Bush signed this month. Lawmakers gave the space agency the same amount of money it received in 2006.
"The net result of the decrease will be a four- to six-month delay of the Orion crew vehicle," Griffin told the Senate Commerce Committee's space subcommittee.
That's more time the U.S. will go without any manned spaceflight capability _ the space shuttle is slated for retirement in 2010. It will fly 13 or 14 more missions to finish the International Space Station and maintain the Hubble space telescope.
Griffin said the gap between the shuttle's retirement and Orion's debut raises practical and strategic concerns.
WASHINGTON - NASA will delay the first manned flight of the new spacecraft designed to... more
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Sept. 8 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA is inviting interested industry representatives, academics and reporters to learn more about the Ares V heavy lift-launch vehicle, the Altair lunar lander, and the roles they will play in returning humans to the moon by 2020.
The Exploration Systems Mission Directorate forum will take place Thursday, Sept. 25, from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. EDT, at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 1615 H Street NW, Washington. The forum will focus on the first phase conceptual designs for the Ares V heavy lift-launch vehicle, the Altair lunar lander and lunar exploration scenarios. Forum attendees will discuss the outcomes of a nine-month lunar transportation capabilities study and near-term business opportunities.
Participants from NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate include Doug Cooke, deputy associate administrator for the directorate, Geoff Yoder, director of the Directorate Integration Office, and Jeff Hanley, manager of NASA's Constellation Program.
The Ares V rocket and Altair lunar lander are part of a fleet of vehicles that NASA's Constellation Program is developing for a new space transportation system designed to travel beyond low Earth orbit. The Constellation fleet also includes the Orion crew exploration vehicle and the Ares I launch vehicle. NASA plans to establish a human outpost on the moon through a successive series of lunar missions beginning in 2020.
Sept. 8 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA is inviting interested industry... more
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NASA has put off the planned launch of its next-generation Orion spacecraft for a year, a setback to efforts to fly a successor to its aging space shuttles, the space agency announced Monday.
The Orion space vehicle in this artist rendering from Lockheed Martin's web site, won't see space until 2014.
more photos »
"September 2014 is when we are saying we will launch the first crew on the Orion," program manager Jeff Hanley told reporters in a conference call Monday.
NASA officials plan to wrap up assembly of the International Space Station and retire the space shuttle fleet in 2010, freeing up money to build and fly the new spacecraft. Cost concerns are at the root of the delay, but NASA is also giving itself wiggle room to deal with the unforeseen technical problems that will inevitably crop up, Hanley said.
"It's the unknown unknowns that we have to hedge against," he said. "Having some number of months of schedule flexibility to meet our commitment, in addition to having some number of months of cost -- dollars -- flexibility, is key to keeping ourselves in a healthy posture."
Sometimes called "Apollo on steroids," Orion is designed to ferry astronauts to and from the space station and eventually back to the moon. Unlike the space shuttles, which land like an airplane, Orion is a capsule that will parachute to a landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California. See photos of the full-size mock-up »
The new goal of September 2014 is a year later than NASA had planned to launch the first Orion, but still six months short of the March 2015 commitment date set by Congress. Program managers were hoping to fly the new vehicle much sooner than that to keep the gap between the last shuttle flight and the first Orion flight to a minimum.
"As we looked at the plan we had for September 2013 against the available dollars, it became clear to us that we needed to adjust our schedules," said Hanley. NASA has put off the planned launch of its next-generation Orion spacecraft for a... more
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CAPE CANAVERAL - Just four years after President Bush announced his vision to send astronauts back to the moon and then on to Mars, legendary astronaut Buzz Aldrin is leading an effort to re-examine the whole idea -- in particular, NASA's choice of rockets for the mission.
It is the latest sign that NASA's Constellation program -- intended to replace the space shuttle after 2010 -- is in trouble.
Concerned by reports that the Ares rockets and Orion crew capsule are beset by cost overruns, schedule delays and complex technical woes, Aldrin says he wants to create a panel of experts to make sure that Constellation is the right way to go.
"We need to stick with the mission but rethink some of the ways we implement it," said Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon. "It doesn't pay to stick with a bad idea."
Aldrin has won some backers, including a prominent Washington think tank and the backers of an alternate rocket design created by moonlighting NASA employees.
But the space agency insists there's no need for more study -- as do its allies on Capitol Hill.
CAPE CANAVERAL - Just four years after President Bush announced his vision to send... more
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NASA has been busy planning for a new spacecraft, the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), to be able to rendezvous with the ISS and then to take a crew back to the moon in conjunction with the Lunar Surface Access Module (LSAM). A Crew Launch Vehicle, named Ares I, derived from the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) will deliver the CEV to low Earth Orbit (LEO) while a larger rocket, Ares 5, will deliver ISS cargo of the LSAM to LEO. Once in LEO, the CEV and LSAM will dock and a J-2X Earth Departure Stage (EDS) will deliver the CEV/LSAM to Low Lunar Orbit (LLO) at 100 km. The EDS is discarded and CEV/LSAM temporarily decouple. The LSAM then performs the Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI) to deliver the LSAM to the lunar surface will all 4 astronauts onboard. After some amount of time on the surface, an ascent stage from the LSAM boosts the crew back to LLO and the ascent stage docks with the unattended CEV. The ascent stage is discarded and the service module section of the CEV boosts the crew module (with crew) towards Earth reentry, and the service module is then discarded. The crew module reenters the upper atmosphere and an ablative heat shield slows the craft to a point where it is captured by the Earth. Parachutes then slow the crew module for a land (or sea in emergencies) landing. Whew, safe at last from solar storms! Ares V will be able to launch 130 metric tons LEO inclined at 28.5 degrees or it can deliver 55 metric tons to trans-lunar orbit. By comparison, the Saturn V was capable of 118 metric tons to LEO or 47 metric tons to lunar orbit.
See http://www.plasmaben.com/CEV.html for more info.NASA has been busy planning for a new spacecraft, the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV),... more
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The Vision for Space Exploration is the United States space policy announced on January 14, 2004 by U.S. President George W. Bush. It is seen as a response to the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, the state of human spaceflight at NASA, and a way to regain public enthusiasm for space exploration.
The Vision for Space Exploration is the United States space policy announced on... more
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NASA animation of the Ares I and V vehicles. Also known as the crew and cargo launch vehicles. These are the proposed vehicles to supersede the Space Shuttle program which ends in 2010. This animation depicts the proposed lunar exploration mission scenario.NASA animation of the Ares I and V vehicles. Also known as the crew and cargo launch... more
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