Cruising to the Moon

How long does it take humans to travel to the moon? Currently, Constellation is planning for the trans-lunar coast to take no longer than 4 days, or 96 hours. Apollo’s design requirement was for the coast time to range between 60 hours and 100 hours. The actual missions (Apollo 10-17) varied from 72 hours to 83 hours.

So why would it take longer on the future missions? It may not actually. At this point, Constellation is in the requirements definition and preliminary design phase for the lunar exploration portion of the program therefore requirements are set for the most stressing – maximum and minimum – types of conditions.

The trans-lunar cruise duration is a function of the energy or change in velocity (delta-V) applied at the trans-lunar injection, or TLI, burn. The energy requirements for the TLI burn will vary depending on where the planned landing site is located on the moon and when the mission is launched, among other factors. So, if a mission is launched on a more favorable opportunity, less energy will be required for the TLI burn and the trip would be quicker.

Since Constellation is planning for worst-case conditions at this point, the transfer time in the current plan minimizes the amount of propellant, and therefore the mass, required for trans-lunar injection. When Constellation flies actual missions to the moon, there will likely be the same flexibility as Apollo to shorten the duration of the flight toward the moon if it is desirable to do so.

Artist’s concept of NASA’s Orion crew exploration vehicle and Altair Lunar Lander while the Earth departure stage performs the trans-lunar injection burn (JSC2009-E-031248).

Ares I-X: Let the Stacking Begin…

Stacking is set to begin for the Ares I-X vehicle on Wednesday, July 8 in the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center. It’s been a long time since the workers in the VAB have seen a new vehicle. In fact, it’s been 25 years since a new vehicle was stacked.

Following nearly three years of work by thousands of dedicated team members, the Ares I-X vehicle is ready for stacking on the Mobile Launch Platform, or MLP, in the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center. 

Over the last week, the management team has met for reviews. Today (July 7), a “go” was given for the stacking operations. All of the modification work has been completed in VAB High Bay 3, as well as the Mobile Launch Platform, in preparation for the new Ares I-X vehicle.

Tomorrow, the Ares I-X aft assembly, composed of the aft skirt and aft motor segment, will be rolled from the Rotation Processing and Surge Facility to the VAB and lifted by overhead crane and placed on the MLP. (Be sure to check out the KSC gallery for photo updates.)

Over the next month, the stacking operations will continue with the additional motor segments, simulated upper stage segments and the vehicle will be completed when the simulated crew module and launch abort system is added to the top. (There will be a time-lapse camera. NASA will be posting video and images.)

We will keep you posted on this blog, on our Facebook page and Twitter.

Let the stacking begin!

 

All eyes on LRO

Constellation has its eyes on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and is anticipating some great images. The spacecraft entered lunar orbit on the morning of June 23 and after that orbit is refined engineers will power up and calibrate LRO’s instruments. In a couple months, LRO will begin mapping the lunar surface to find future landing sites and searching for resources that would make possible a permanent human presence on the moon.

 

While the Apollo missions demonstrated that that it was possible to send humans to the moon, they did so for very short times – only three days, and at great risks. The LRO mission is paving the way for extended human habitation on the lunar surface and striving to reduce the risks to the astronauts travelling there.

 

LRO’s very high resolution cameras and laser altimeter will examine more than 50 potential landing and outpost sites on the lunar surface in enough detail to resolve an object the size of a beach ball. This will provide information to engineers currently designing the Altair lunar lander and allow them to build safe and effective landing systems, and will give mission planners the information they need to select safe landing sites.

 

Plus, the logistics resupply of a lunar outpost will be a challenge far exceeding that of the International Space Station. It will be necessary for lunar astronauts to learn to “live off the land” by utilizing the resources available on the moon. These may include water in permanently shadowed regions of the lunar poles, which could be invaluable for both consumables for the astronauts and propellant for their spacecraft. LRO instruments will map these regions of shadow and determine whether and where these resources are located. In addition, LRO will map the resources of the entire moon’s surface looking for deposits of other valuable resources, such as oxygen, locked in the lunar soil.

 

The availability of energy also will be the determining factor on how effective humans will be in accomplishing lunar science and exploration objectives. Because the moon’s axis is not tilted like the Earth’s, there are regions of the lunar poles that receive almost continuous sunlight, rather than the 28-day cycle of light and dark found in most regions. This will allow solar power systems to provide electricity to a lunar outpost with much greater efficiency. The LRO cameras will accurately determine these regions of perpetual sunlight by observing them over an entire year. 

 

See the LRO web site for additional info: http://lro.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Comprehensive Constellation Status Report Presented to the Augustine Panel

The Norm  Augustine led U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee heard from Doug Cooke and Jeff Hanley  yesterday during the panel’s first public meeting held at the Carnegie Institute in Washington. 

The full presentation, which includes a comprehensive status report on Constellation can be found at:

https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/library/hsfr_exploration.html

Jeff Hanley briefed that NASA is on track to maintain the March 2015 goal for the first crewed Orion/Ares flight to the International Space Station.  He emphasized how Constellation is making use of existing NASA and contractor facilities and capabilities but in a leaner, smaller more sustainable manner to not just provide crew transport to space station, but to develop future human spaceflight systems that move beyond low Earth orbit, to the moon and beyond.  

Technical progress to date is impressive.  Scan through the Augustine panel briefing charts and you can see the labor of over 10,000 civil servant and contractor employees hard at work designing, building and testing hardware.   Click and scan through an interactive tool posted to the Constellation website this week and you can see the Ares and Ares I-X, Orion, Altair vehicle designs come to life, linking design drawings to video footage of actual hardware and tests.

https://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/constellation_projects/

Fitting It All Together

Take a look at the new Constellation video that aired on NASA TV during the recent STS-125 shuttle mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. In it, astronaut Pam Melroy guides you through Constellation and our hopes and goals for exploration. Click on the image below, and you will be taken to the interactive feature where you can learn about it all. To see the full length video, click on “Play Video” in the middle of the screen once you access the Web feature, and let us know what you think.

Same Choices,Same Story Here

There’ve been a lot of stories in the press lately about Constellation and its progress or supposed lack thereof. The alleged danger that the program is in. Could it be that when there’s nothing real to report that people try to stir up old news?

 

The fact is that Constellation is targeting March 2015 for the first crewed flight to the International Space Station, with Orion aboard the Ares I rocket. That date hasn’t changed for some time. We did originally give our teams a very tough challenge in the early days of the program of making this milestone in September 2013. And they worked hard toward it. But the fact is, we needed more money early on. Given the way budget cycles work, we were given a budget to initial operational capability, but the critical mass we would have needed to make that earlier date just wasn’t there right away.

 

So we made choices. We continue to make choices. About what to do and when. About sequencing and doing things in parallel that we might ideally do in a different fashion given every dollar we wanted when we wanted it. But who gets that? The reality is that we are very fortunate to have a budget that will enable us to get to a crewed flight in 2015, but we’re going to have to put off some other work until we get the Ares I and Orion system fully designed, tested and flown.

 

Our budgets are built to accommodate the change and contingency that any development program encounters. We have, after all, not created a new system for spaceflight in over 35 years. It’s an enormous challenge and one that we welcome. There have been varying budget numbers reported in the press. The bottom line is that we had some numbers early on that we used as estimates while the overall architecture we were going to use was still under discussion. Right now we’re targeting $36 billion for Constellation’s cost through initial operational capability. That’s for hardware, the stuff that will actually get us into space.  But we also need to budget for the people and ground operations, the upcoming work that must begin on Ares V and early development work on lunar systems. When you add that in, you get to around $44 billion for Constellation through 2015.

 

But those budgets are still being worked out with the new Administration. In the meantime, America should be proud of the exceptional work by teams across the country for the next generation of space vehicles. We’re working hard on them every single day.

 

Small Steps to a Great Adventure


If the greatest adventures begin with small steps, the Constellation Program took giant strides in 2008 and has more planned for 2009. Here is an excerpt from the year’s-end note, dated December 2008, Constellation Program Manager Jeff Hanley sent to his team.


All, as I type this I’m coming to the end of nearly a full week in our nation’s capitol, and here at the end of our third year as a team I owe you an update from 50,000 feet (sorry, 15 km). I think it’s important that our entire team have this context, so that we can together take on the challenges that 2009 will surely bring.

First, as I review the events of 2008, and the progress that we together have made across this agency team, I am truly proud of what you have accomplished — and you should be too. Today we have projects and hardware and software in nearly every phase of the lifecycle, from pre-formulation of our lunar surface strategy and the international partnerships that are already beginning to form, to formal formulation of the Ares V and Altair requirements, to completion of the program definition phase for Ares I, Orion, and their sister projects, to the testing of engine components and fabrication of flight test hardware for Pad Abort 1 and Ares I-X.

The program has built considerable momentum in the past 12 months and indeed over the last three years since we stood up as a team. We’ve done it for a fraction of the cost in people and resources compared to Apollo, shuttle and station through this phase. We’ve done it while the same supporting institutions execute our other two human spaceflight programs. We’ve done it with focus and resolve to transition shuttle workforce and assets to the new program in the smartest way possible. We’ve done it — done it all — with the Moon as our goal. “Design for lunar” has guided our every move, our every decision, within the bounds of what we can fiscally afford through these lean years until shuttle is retired.

I know you all have seen the public discourse regarding Ares and Orion and shuttle, and understandably such discourse can temper our resolve to push forward — if we let it. But, let’s review the bidding. First, we should remind ourselves, as we saw in intimate detail at last summer’s Lunar Capability Concept Review (arguably the finest such review the team has yet executed), that the Ares I/Ares V/Orion/Altair transportation system is highly integrated and keenly designed to open the lunar frontier to us in the years to come. Our driving requirements of going anywhere on the Moon, staying twice as long as Apollo in a sortie mode, sending twice as many crew members, and enabling their return at any time, must remain at the forefront of any consideration to alter the nation’s exploration launch architecture. I assure each of you that we are doing all we can to communicate this key aspect of our baseline plan — it is about much more than launching Orion to LEO (Low Earth Orbit).

The shuttle team, as you know, has performed a study of projected cost and decision points for extending the life of shuttle. I have not seen the report in its final form so I won’t comment on the interim version. But I will say — will reassure you — that Constellation’s needs, interests, and requirements were central to their deliberations, and we were partnered closely with the study team to provide the Constellation implications of any extension. It was a good effort and I am quite satisfied that any impacts to Constellation are well accounted for.

Somewhat in tandem, in October we kicked off our own special study led by Ralph Roe out of NESC (NASA Engineering and Safety Center) to look at options to accelerate Constellation to allow the first human flight to occur prior to our March 2015 commitment date. All of the deputy managers of our program and project offices participated, along with a substantial number of experienced contributors from outside the program. It took our most recent baseline plan — including budgets, schedules, technical content, risks and threats, and assessed achievability of three different acceleration cases to improve upon the March of 2015 commitment date, assuming of course that resources were added to do so. Ralph briefed the draft report to leadership at HQ (NASA Headquarters), and while it is still being finalized, the findings are not new — the upshot being, if you want to accelerate Ares I and Orion then significant new money must be added to the Constellation budget in FY09 and FY10. This is the same answer that we provided more than a year ago when asked what it would take to keep our September 2013 baseline with an adequate level of confidence.

And no wonder – if you look at a “traditional” funding profile for an aerospace program and compare it to the Constellation budget profile, the deficit in these early years is obvious. What it compels us to do, therefore, is defer some key work to later that would buy down considerable risk — flight and ground tests, manufacturing demos, test articles to investigate structural margins, engineering development units, buys of long lead parts, etc. This is where we are at today with our internal target of September 2014, compounded by very lean reserves in these same two years to deal with surprises.

We’re at where we’re at. In the weeks ahead we will proceed assuming no new money will be forthcoming to accelerate and we will instead move forward to adjust our plan to meet our March 2015 commitment. If a decision comes forward to accelerate by the April timeframe, an earlier date is still possible, but that gets less and less likely with each passing month.

Again, none of this should be a surprise — though some will feign shock and accuse us of overselling. But we have been very careful these three years to avoid that. We have consistently pointed out that our internal ‘work to’ dates were aggressive with this fiscal profile and what additional funding it would take to increase our confidence and ability to execute. These same realities have been reinforced by those who independently review us. Throughout we have applied common government and industry practices and methods for how projects and programs are funded and managed. We kept the option open to enable a more aggressive date as long as we reasonably could before last summer’s re-baselining. Two years of continuing resolutions haven’t helped, but we’ve worked around them to the best of our ability to keep moving forward.

Look at all you’ve accomplished in spite of that!!

All this is offered as context to further amplify what an amazing result — in spite of it all — that 2008 has produced. Constellation is not a paper program anymore. It is a full-fledged assault on the frontier, and if we keep the mission at the forefront of our sights then we can persevere. As the year draws to a close, we enjoy broad support in Congress, we have a vision that we’ve not only embraced but have strategically over the last three years codified in an exploration architecture with a broad range of capability to allow us to unlock first cis-lunar space and then the inner solar system in the years to come… and who knows what other missions these new tools might be employed for?

In the coming year, let’s continue to make history — one milestone at a time — as we celebrate those whose shoulders we stand upon more than a generation ago.

Ares: America's Rocket for Future Space Missions

 

How did NASA select the Ares family of rockets as America’s new space transportation system?

Since the 1980’s, NASA has evaluated thousands of studies relating to space transportation. It has been said we could “pave” the way to the moon with all the studies that have been conducted. These studies looked at thousands of combinations and variations of how to send humans beyond low Earth orbit, back to the moon and on to Mars. 

NASA looked at a wide variety of launch concepts — from the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (Atlas V, Delta IV), Space Shuttle (including Shuttle C, Direct type approaches and other solid and liquid rocket booster propelled systems) combinations, foreign systems and clean sheet designs.

The Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS) was chartered in the spring of 2005 to recommend a fundamental architecture for supporting International Space Station, Lunar and Mars transportation.

Using data from previous and ongoing studies (several hundred vehicles), and consisting of a team of knowledgeable experts from inside and outside NASA, this study compared many launch and staging options for safety, effectiveness, performance, flexibility, risk and affordability.

ESAS concluded that NASA should adopt and pursue a Shuttle-derived architecture as the next-generation launch system, using a smaller vehicle for crew missions and a dedicated, heavy-lift launcher for cargo missions. This approach was selected due to several significant advantages, particularly safety, reliability and cost.

NASA continued to refine its launch recommendations post-ESAS. Since early 2006 NASA has made the following major modifications to the initial designs.

Upgraded from the shuttle’s four-segment reusable solid rocket booster design (RSRB) to a five-segment RSRB design — forming a common basis for Ares I and V Eliminated the space shuttle main engine (SSME) in favor of a newly designed J-2X engine for the Ares I upper stage. The Ares V upgraded from a five-segment RSRB with expendable SSME Core to a derivative of the Ares I 1st stage with a six-engine RS-68 Core and the J-2X engine for the earth departure stage (EDS).

Developing the new J-2X engine for both the Ares I upper stage and the Ares V Earth departure stage solves several potential problems including starting the SSME at altitude and the major expense of using it for the first stage engine. For additional cost savings Ares will use the expendable RS-68 engine which is “off the shelf” technology that meets both Department of Defense and NASA needs.

These combined changes represent a projected savings of over $5 billion in life cycle costs below the initial ESAS recommendations.

The shuttle heritage design offers years of proven flight concepts with a very strong technical and safety foundation for next-generation vehicle. Since ESAS, NASA has continued to assess options — over 1,700 to date. After a thorough analysis of all the exploration architecture requirements, other solutions were ultimately determined to be less safe, less reliable, and more costly than Ares I and Ares V.

Throughout the selection process for its launch vehicles, NASA has been thorough, transparent, subject to regular independent reviews, open to alternative ideas, and has made all of its decisions based on hard data.

Ares is a solid foundation for America’s future in space.

Practicing for the Moon

Here’s a picture of NASA’s Lunar Electric Rover getting ready to practice docking with some lunar habitat mockups. Test engineers at the Johnson Space Center spent the day recently seeing how the rover docked with different habitat configurations. The one you see in the picture hasn’t been tested yet, but is called the Toroidal Habitat Mockup. It’s basically a giant plywood mockup of an inflatable donut-shaped habitat that is giving the teams ideas of what will work best on the moon.

Take a Spin Around The Inside of Altair

 

One of the things we get a lot of questions about is what the inside of the Altair lunar lander will look like. Well, initial concept work is already underway, and the NASA team is busy exploring Altair’s design. While the details of what the crew cabin will look like are still being figured out, what is known is that Altair will carry four astronauts to the lunar surface and will serve as their home for up to a week.

Altair is big. One current concept is that it will stand more than 30 feet high and will be almost 45 feet wide at the footpads. There are mock-ups already built at the Johnson Space Center in Houston where habitability teams are working inside, trying out different configurations. These teams are taking a look at how astronauts will live and work inside, so that Altair can be built in the best way possible for the mission.

Click on the link below and take a quick spin around the inside of Altair. It’s a conceptand NASA is exploring othersbut as you can see, it will be very different from anything we’ve designed before.

Click here to view the video in Windows Media Player format

Click here to view the video in RealPlayer format