WASHINGTON
-- NASA officials said Monday that they have run out of room for error as they
try to keep the agency's $700 million Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)
mission on track for a launch next October.
"We
are holding to the October 28 launch date" for the LRO and the Lunar
Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), which are slated to launch
together aboard an Atlas 5 rocket, said Carl Walz,
director of advanced capabilities in NASA's Exploration Systems Mission
Directorate. "Now, that is not to say there are not challenges for LRO and
LCROSS. We don't have a lot of slack days with the LRO right now."
Speaking to
reporters during a media roundtable, Walz said
LCROSS, an $80 million spacecraft NASA added to the LRO
mission to take advantage of excess launch vehicle capacity, is doing
better schedule-wise. He said the LCROSS team has about 20 days of slack to
address any problems that might crop up.
But some of
the problems the LRO team is wrestling with, he warned, could affect the
assembly schedules of both spacecraft. An inertial measurement unit common to
both spacecraft is "having issues," he said when asked for an
example.
Richard Gilbrech, NASA associate administrator for exploration
systems, blamed LRO's schedule worries on the
magnitude of the integration job ahead for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
in Greenbelt, Md. He said he is keeping a "close eye" on the LRO but
so far has not seen sufficient cause to slip the launch date.
Gilbrech
and the head of NASA's Constellation Program, Jeff Hanley, also fielded
questions about whether the Orion
Crew Exploration Vehicle, on track for a 2015 debut, normally would land on
ground or splash down in the ocean off the coast of California. The
Constellation Program encompasses Orion, NASA's planned space shuttle
replacement, as well as other vehicles the space agency needs in order to
return to the Moon by 2020.
With an Orion
preliminary design review slated for late 2008, spacecraft designers are
proceeding on the assumption that Orion's normal mode of landing will be an
Apollo-like splashdown with only a contingency capability to touch down on
land.
Gilbrech
said that while the Constellation Program is leaning toward a water-landing
scheme, because it appears safer and does not require Orion to carry 680
kilograms of airbags to the Moon and back, a final decision is still at least a
year away.
"We
have not picked a landing mode for Orion yet. Both options are still on the
table as we head into the coming year," he said.
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