WASHINGTON -- NASA has signed a $1.2 billion contract with
Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne to develop the J-2X engine the U.S. space agency
needs to power the upper stages of its Ares I crew launch vehicle and Ares V
heavy-lift rocket.
Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne of Canoga Park, Calif. has
been working on the engine, an updated version of the Apollo-heritage J-2,
since June 2006 under a temporary contract awarded without a competition. That
contract called for the company to start work on five development versions of
the engine followed by two certification engines.
"This is huge," Scott Horowitz, chief of NASA's
Exploration Systems Directorate, during a Monday teleconference with
reporters on the new contract. "It's a big deal that we now have the J-2X
contract signed and ready to go because it's a big piece in getting this rocket
ready to fly."
NASA's Ares
I rocket is a two-stage booster designed to launch NASA's capsule-based
space shuttle successor - the Orion Crew Exploration
Vehicle - into low-Earth orbit. The larger Ares V, meanwhile, is slated to
haul heftier payloads into space such as cargo, rocket engine stages for
Moon-bound missions, lunar landers and other hardware. Both the Ares I and Ares
V rockets will rely on J-2X engines to power their second stages.
With the new contract, NASA has added one additional
development engine to its order, for a total of eight.
Mike Kynard, NASA's J-2X program manager, told reporters that
buying an additional development engine would allow NASA to begin its testing
program sooner and conduct more tests than previously planned. Kynard said some
280 tests are planned between 2010 and late 2012, when NASA expects to conduct
the first test flight of a full-up Ares I rocket and an unmanned Orion Crew
Exploration Vehicle. Orion's first crewed flight is expected to occur no
earlier than September 2013, NASA officials added.
With the announcement of the J-2X contract, NASA moved a
step closer to its goal of having the entire Ares I rocket under contract by
the end of 2007.
"We needed to press forward so that we could still
harvest some of the experience from Apollo," said Jeff Hanley, NASA's
Constellation program manager for the agency's new manned spacecraft, adding
that J-2X engineers sought input from Apollo program veterans well-versed in
the new engine's J-2 predecessor. "That's really been a treat, I think,
for the team...to be able to go back and interact with that generation."
Steve Cook, manager of the Exploration Launch Projects
Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala., said the
agency expects to finalize a contract with Alliant TechSystems by mid-August
for the development of Ares I's solid-rocket-booster-based main stage. Similar
to Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, Alliant TechSystems got started on its Ares
I work last year under a temporary $120 million contract signed in late 2005.
By late August, Cook said, NASA should be ready to announce
which team it has selected to build the Ares I upper stage. That competition is
pitting Boeing against an Alliant Techsytems-led team that includes Orion prime
contractor Lockheed Martin Space Systems and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne.
A separate
contract for the rocket's avionics system, or instrument unit, is slated for
award around early December, he said.
SPACE.com
staff writer Tariq Malik contributed to this story from New York City.
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