WASHINGTON
– NASA announced Tuesday that it has selected Houston-based Boeing Space
Exploration to build the upper stage of the Ares I rocket the United States
will use to launch astronauts into orbit after the space shuttle retires.
Boeing beat
out Brigham City, Utah-based ATK Launch Systems and its teammates Lockheed
Martin Space Systems and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne to win its first major
piece of the new launch system.
The $514.7
million cost-plus-award fee contract runs through 2016 and covers the
manufacture of a ground test article, three flight test units and six
production flight units. The Ares I upper stage will boost NASA's planned
shuttle successor, the Orion
Crew Exploration Vehicle, into orbit.
Boeing's
teammates on the program include Hamilton Sundstrand, Moog, Northrop Grumman,
Orion Propulsion Inc., SUMMA Technology Inc., United Space Alliance and the
United Launch Alliance.
Had Boeing
lost the upper stage competition, it would have had only one more shot at
getting a piece of the multibillion dollar new launch system – a roughly $300
million contract NASA expects to award in December for the rocket's avionics
system. Boeing is among a half-dozen companies competing for that work.
NASA's
selection of Boeing is a disappointment for Brigham City, Utah-based ATK Launch
Systems and its teammates Lockheed Martin Space Systems and Pratt & Whitney
Rocketdyne, the only other team to bid for the Ares I upper-stage contract.
However,
ATK and its teammates already have major pieces of NASA's space shuttle
successor.
In early
August, ATK signed a $1.8 billion contract August for the Ares I rocket's main
stage, a derivative of the solid-rocket boosters it builds for the shuttle. In
July, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne concluded a $1.2 billion deal with NASA
for the design, development and testing of the J-2X engine that will power Ares
I's liquid-fueled upper stage. And last August, Lockheed Martin Space Systems
beat out Boeing and teammate Northrop Grumman for a nearly $4 billion contract
to build the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, the six-person
capsule designed to launch atop Ares I.
Most of
Boeing's upper stage work will be performed at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility
in New Orleans. Lockheed Martin currently uses the facility to manufacture
giant external fuel tanks for the space shuttle. The Ares I upper stage, while
smaller than the space shuttle external tank, will be much larger than any
upper stage in service today.
NASA
expects to conduct its first orbital flight test of the Ares I rocket in 2013
and start using the vehicle to transport astronauts to the International Space Station
no later than March 2015. The finished rocket is expected to lift 55,000 pounds
(25,000 kilograms) to low Earth orbit.
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