WASHINGTON
-- NASA and Alliant Techsystems (ATK) have finalized a no-bid contract worth
$1.8 billion to design and develop the main stage of the Ares I rocket that
will boost the agency's planned Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle into orbit for
trips to the international space station and eventually the Moon.
The first
stage of the Ares I
rocket, currently under development at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center
in Huntsville, Ala., is a five-segment version of the solid-rocket boosters
that ATK builds for the space shuttle.
Measuring
164 feet (50 meters) in height and 13 feet (four meters) in diameter,
the Ares I first stage will tip the scales at 1,288,912 pounds (630,000
kilograms), with nearly 90 percent of that weight coming from the rubber-like
solid propellant that runs up the center of the booster. Taller and more
powerful than the twin boosters that helped lift space shuttle Endeavour on its
Aug.
8 mission to the International Space Station, Ares I's five-segment booster
will produce 3.6 million pounds of thrust, accelerating the rocket to 4,473
miles (7,200 kilometers) per hour in just 2 minutes before the rocket's J-2X-powered
upper stage takes over to carry Orion the rest of the way to orbit.
The
cost-plus contract runs through 2013 and calls for ATK Launch Systems of
Brigham City, Utah, to build eight boosters: five that will be used in ground
tests starting in 2009 and three that will be used in flight tests beginning in
2012, according to Tom Williams, NASA's deputy program manager for the Ares I
main stage.
In
addition, Williams said, ATK will provide two partial boosters for vibration
testing and will support an early flight test — dubbed Ares I-X — of a
four-segment space shuttle solid-rocket booster topped with an inert fifth
segment.
After Ares
I-X in April 2009, NASA plans to fly its first five-segment Ares I booster in
September 2012 on a suborbital trajectory. Approximately six months later, Ares
I will conduct its first orbital test flight, carrying an unpiloted Orion
capsule into space. The first crewed test flight of Ares and Orion is slated for
September 2013. Steve Cooke, director of Marshall's Exploration Launch
Projects office, said Orion would visit the space station during that planned
two-week shakeout flight.
ATK was selected
to build the Ares I first stage in December 2005 and had been working since
then under a provisional contract. NASA and ATK finalized negotiations on
long-term contract July 13 and signed the deal Aug. 10 at the U.S. space agency's headquarters here, NASA officials said.
Production
of Ares I main-stage boosters needed for flights beyond the test program will
be covered under a separate contract that NASA and ATK will not begin to negotiate
until 2009 or 2010, Cooke said. "That's down the road a bit," he said.
Once in
service, Ares I is expected to launch twice a year to deliver Orion and its
six-person crews to the space station.
NASA also
intends to use the five-segment boosters in pairs to help lift Ares V, the
massive rocket being planned to launch the lunar landers and other hardware
needed to send
astronauts to the Moon starting around 2020.
Once those
twice-a-year lunar sorties begin, NASA anticipates buying around six flight
boosters a year: two for each Ares V mission and one for each Ares I that lifts
off. While such lunar missions are still a ways off, Jeff Hanley, NASA's
Constellation program director, said the work NASA is doing on Ares I is laying
important ground work for the future.
"The
investments we are making today are investments in the program to send
astronauts back to the Moon. We are building parts of the Ares V vehicle now,
in fact some of the most important parts," Hanley said. "So it's part of a
long-term set of choices we are making to get us on the path to getting back to
the Moon."
In addition
to the solid boosters, the Aries V also will incorporate the J-2X upper-stage
engine, which is being developed by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne of Canoga
Park, Calif.
Meanwhile,
ATK expects to learn by the end of August it will have a major role in
developing the Ares I upper stage. ATK is teamed with Lockheed Martin Space
Systems of Denver and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne for the contract; the
competing team is led by Boeing NASA Systems of Houston.
That
contract, which requires the winning team to use the Michoud Assembly Facility
in New Orleans to build the upper-stage hardware, is expected to be worth
around $900 million.
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