NASA's
first manned test flight of the Orion spacecraft that will replace the retiring
U.S. space shuttles won't launch until 2014, a year later than the agency
hoped, due to funding and technical concerns, program managers said Monday.
Jeff
Hanley, manager of NASA's
Constellation program overseeing the development of the multibillion-dollar
Orion crew capsules and their Ares I rockets, told reporters that the agency
remains on target for its March 2015 deadline to bring the new spacecraft
online. But the agency's internal target of launching astronauts aboard the new
vehicles as early as September 2013 has proven untenable due to available
funding resources.
"This new
plan, September 2014, aligns our schedule to what we forecast will be the
available resources," Hanley said in a teleconference. "We are slowing down the
work to match and stay under our available funding, and to do that we had to go
to a later date."
NASA's
three aging space shuttles - Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour - are due to
retire in 2010 once construction of the still unfinished International Space
Station is complete. The agency plans 10 more shuttle missions, two of which
are set to fly this fall, to finish station assembly and overhaul
the Hubble Space Telescope.
The agency
is replacing its shuttle workhorse with Orion capsules that are designed to
launch atop two-stage Ares I rockets. The spacecraft are expected to be used
initially for space station-bound missions and sit at the core of NASA's vision of returning
astronauts to the moon by 2020 with the help of the planned Ares V heavy-lift
rockets and Altair lunar landers.
NASA
officials have repeatedly said that March 2015 is the official target to begin
operational manned flights of Orion spacecraft, but the agency is hoping to fly
the vehicles earlier to minimize the current five-year gap between their crewed
launch debut and the shuttle fleet's retirement.
"We are adhering
to our commitment date of March 2015 for initial operating capability," said
Doug Cook, NASA's deputy associate administrator for exploration.
The agency
hopes to test Orion's
launch abort system and fly the first Ares rocket test - Ares I-X - in the
first half of 2009. But subsequent unmanned abort system and Ares I launch
tests before the first crewed flight may see additional schedule slips, program
managers said.
"Our
confidence that the gap will get no worse than five years has actually
improved," Hanley added.
A separate report
released Monday by the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), a group that
monitors NASA performance annually, also stressed the importance of adequate
funding to the success of NASA's Constellation program.
"While
there are still opportunities for improvement, the panel's finding concluded
that NASA is making significant progress in improving safety issues during the
past year," said ASAP chairman Joseph Dyer in a written statement.
The panel also
expressed concern over what its report described as a lack of clear direction
for the Constellation program, as well as an Orion design process that has focused on minimizing
weight by weighing the benefits and drawbacks of each system.
"When
safety elements have to "earn their way" onto a design that has already begun
to take shape, objectivity and consistency in the decision-making could be
compromised," the ASAP report stated.
But Hanley
said the preliminary design process for Orion is still under way, with engineers
giving every system for the spacecraft an immense amount of attention. The
goal, he said, is to refine the design to a final spacecraft that is robust,
reliable and safe.
"We are not
just blindly cutting out redundancy or robustness in this design process,"
Hanley said. "I could not be more pleased with the progress we are making."
Part of
that progress, he added, includes a solution for excessive vibration issues
afflicting Orion's Ares I booster. Engineers have drawn up plans for
spring-like electromagnetic mass absorbers to dampen the vibrations.
"The Orion
is headed where it needs to be," Hanley said.
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