Thirty-seven
years ago today, Project
Apollo put the first humans on the surface of the Moon. The next time the
U.S. launches its astronauts to Earth's natural satellite, they will do so as
part of Project Orion, collectSPACE.com has learned.
NASA
intends to use the moniker Orion as both the title for its next generation
manned craft, the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), and as the project's name.
This approach is modeled after the 1960's program when Apollo Command Modules
launched astronauts under Project Apollo.
Under
Project Orion, NASA would launch crews of four astronauts aboard Orion capsules,
first to Earth orbit and the International Space Station and then later to the
Moon.
Two teams,
one led by Lockheed Martin and the other a joint effort by Northrop Grumman and
The Boeing Co., are currently
competing to build the CEV. NASA is expected to select the winner in
September.
In June,
NASA announced
that its crew
launch vehicle, which would lift the CEV into space, would be named Ares 1,
with Ares 5 reserved for a larger booster to haul cargo or a future
Moon lander.
At the time,
NASA's Associate Administrator for Exploration Scott Horowitz said that the
reason he wasn't also releasing the name of the CEV at the same time had to do
with the legal process related to federal trademarks.
"We
have to make sure we aren't infringing on any copyrights or anything,"
Horowitz said, describing how Ares was selected. "You have to go through
that whole process and that just takes time."
At the same
June 30th press conference, Constellation program director Jeff Hanley said
that the name for the CEV was close to being finalized.
"We
are trading three or four names at this point. There is a running, leading
candidate that of course, I can't talk about yet because we have to go through
a process to have it vetted and approved. Hopefully, I'd like to think that in
a month we'd be able to role that out," said Hanley.
NASA
spokesperson Dolores Beasley told collectSPACE, a SPACE.com
partner, today that NASA did not have a name for the CEV at this time.
Yet a
publicly-accessible federal trademark search shows that NASA was granted the
use of Orion on July 14, 2006 for use with "command modules" and
"crew capsules", as well as crew and cargo launch vehicles.
Sources
close to the agency confirmed to collectSPACE that the name Orion was in
the final stages of approval.
Earlier
documents obtained in January by collectSPACE used the names Antares and
Artemis as 'notional' titles for the CEV. Orion will soon officially replace
those other names for internal and external use, though when NASA will announce
Orion is not yet known.
In addition
to its association with Greek mythology, which includes tales of Apollo and
Artemis, Orion
is also one of the most recognizable constellations in the night sky, that of
the embattled hunter. Project Orion was also the title given to a 1960s project
to design a nuclear
pulse-driven spacecraft.
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