Visions of a base near the Moon's south pole. Graphic Credit/NASA
NASA is looking to late June to unveil of a comprehensive plan to transition from the space shuttle and Constellation programs to a new deep space exploration strategy fashioned around the 2010 NASA Authorization Act, the agency’s top exploration official told a Congressional oversight panel on Wednesday.
The time frame coincides with NASA’s final shuttle mission, and an organizational change in NASA that merges the Exploration and Space Systems directorates.
Other experts who testified before the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics said the White House and NASA must move ahead quickly with the transition if they wish to prevent further erosion of a national aerospace workforce and industrial base that underwrote two million jobs and $216 billion in sales last year.
“Right now, we are shooting to have the report in late June,” Doug Cooke, NASA associate administrator for the explorations systems mission directorate, told the panel. “That is a success oriented approach, but that is out goal.”
Policy Difference Cause Legislative Uproar
While the timeline for the shuttle’s retirement was sketched out by the previous administration in 2004, President Obama startled aerospace industry early last year when he announced the termination of the previous administration’s Constellation lunar initiative. The termination ignited a legislative furor in the states that host NASA’s human space flight centers, where officials were counting on transferring shuttle personnel to Constellation.
The uproar diminished some last October when Obama signed the 2010 Authorization Act. The legislation includes a bi-partisan road map hat nurtures new commercial orbital transportation services while calling for a NASA-developed heavy lift rocket, the Space Launch System, and a crew capsule, the Multi-purpose Crew Vehicle, that could be ready for operation by the end of 2016.
Report Will Address Existing Contracts, Timelines
In his testimony, Cooke said the late June report will address a range of thorny issues that have prolonged the consensus building on a new strategy. Those include whether NASA’s current Constellation program contracts with Lockheed Martin, Boeing, ATK and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne and their subcontractors can be amended to support the SLS and MPCV as well as how changing White House budget commitments affect the 2016 delivery date.
“Let me assure you NASA is aggressively addressing the specifics required in the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 and to providing a path forward in the coming months for the SLS and the MPCV in terms of specific decisions that are within budget constraints,” said Cooke. “We are also compelled to apply the capability lessons learned and knowledge gained through the Constellation Program.”
The agency has already determined that contract work by Lockheed Martin on the deep space version of the Constellation’s Program’s Orion crew capsule can meet the objectives of the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, Cooke testified.
A similar assessment is on going with respect to the SLS, which Cooke said NASA is shaping around proven shuttle propulsion technologies and Constellation research on the cancelled Ares 1 crew launch system.
Heavy Lift Reference Includes Shuttle, Constellation Elements
The agency has settled on a reference decision for the SLS, which would cluster five space shuttle main engines in the first stage underneath a J2X powered upper stage. The SLS reference includes two five-segment versions of the smaller solid rocket boosters used by the shuttle. The five-segment solid rocket, which has undergone ground testing, comprised the first stage of the Ares 1 as well.
However, Cook told the panel the reference design could change as NASA evaluates proposals from 13 independent industry studies and trade assessments that would substitute kerosene and liquid oxygen burning engines for the shuttle power plants.
Astronauts dock Orion capsules for an asteroid mission. Image credit/Lockheed Martin
The new rocketry and capsule would support exploration missions to a range of destinations, including the lunar Lagrange points, near Earth asteroids as well as the moons of Mars and ultimately the surface of the Red Planet.
Government, Commercial Alternatives
However, lawmakers also support an interim version of an ultimate heavy lifter that would be capable of placing 130 metric tons of hardware in Earth orbit. The smaller version would support the launching of 70 to 100 metric tons to orbit, a capability that would ensure astronauts could also reach the International Space Station with the new capsule.
That, too, has been a point of contention between some lawmakers and the White House. Obama’s strategy assigns station cargo deliveries and crew transportation to commercial companies.
However, for at least several years, NASA will pay Russia for crew transportation to the station aboard Soyuz rockets, while U. S. commercial companies pursue transportation capabilities of their own with space agency funding.
“The U. S. government should have its own means of assuring access to space, even as it makes increasing use of commercial services and international partners,” Scott Pace, director of George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute, told the subcommittee. “Just as a diversified investment portfolio needs bonds as well as stocks, a government option is an important and crucial part of a diverse portfolio for a strategic national capability like human spaceflight.”
Urgency, a Must
Jim Maser, chairman of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ Corporate Membership Committee, urged the subcommittee to shape a strategy as quickly as possible.
“All I know, is the shuttle program ends in June. Constellation is cancelled, and replaced with nothing I would characterize as other than platitudes on innovation, inspiration, technology infrastructure and education,” said Maser, who is president of Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne. “We need to define the vehicle. It needs to be something that goes beyond Low Earth Orbit from the get-go, and we need to get started now.”