obama nasa

Obama revives capsule from defunct moon programU.S. President Barack Obama is reviving the NASA crew capsule project that he cancelled with the rest of the moon program earlier this year, in a move that will mean more jobs and less reliance on the Russians, officials said Tuesday.

The space capsule, called Orion, still won’t go to the moon. It will go unmanned to the International Space Station to stand by as an emergency vehicle to return astronauts home, officials said.

Administration officials also said NASA will speed up development of a massive rocket. It would have the power to blast crew and cargo far from Earth, although no destination has been chosen yet.

The rocket would be ready to launch several years earlier than under the old moon plan.

The two moves are being announced before a Thursday visit to Cape Canaveral, Fla., by Obama. They are designed to counter criticism of the Obama administration’s space plans as being low on detail, physical hardware and local jobs.

The president killed former president George W. Bush’s moon mission, called Constellation, as being unsustainable.

In a major shift, the Obama space plan relies on private companies to fly to the space station. But it also extends the space station’s life by five years and puts billions into research to eventually develop new government rocket ships for future missions to a nearby asteroid, the moon, Martian moons or other points in space.

Those stops would be stepping stones for an eventual mission to Mars.
Moon man upset

Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the moon, other veteran Apollo astronauts and former senior NASA managers have been attacking the Obama plan — before the latest revision — as the death of U.S. leadership in space.

Armstrong, in an email to The Associated Press, said he had “substantial reservations,” and more than two dozen Apollo-era veterans signed a letter calling the plan a “misguided proposal that forces NASA out of human space operations for the foreseeable future.”

Even with the revival of the Orion crew capsule, the overall moon return mission initiated by Bush — which involved a base camp — remains dead. And the revived Orion, slimmed down from earlier versions, won’t be used as originally intended, to land on the moon.

The capsule will be developed and launched — unmanned — on an existing rocket to the space station, said a senior NASA official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Orion would remain at the space station and be used as an emergency escape ship back to Earth. That means NASA wouldn’t have to rely on the Russian Soyuz capsule to return astronauts to Earth.

Launching Orion on unmanned existing rockets — such as Atlas or Deltas — would save money and time.

The Obama plan also will speed up development of a larger, “heavy-lift” rocket that would take cargo and crew away from Earth orbit to the moon, asteroids and other places.

Originally, Obama was proposing just spending billions of dollars on various research programs to develop breakthroughs that would make such trips cheaper and faster. Critics said that plan was too vague.

Now the president is committed to choosing a single heavy-lift rocket design by 2015 and then starting its construction, officials said.

This shift by Obama means NASA would launch a heavy rocket years before it was supposed to under the old Constellation plan, the NASA official said. However, it will be different from the Apollo-like Ares V rocket that the Constellation plan would have used.

Instead, it will incorporate newer concepts such as refuelling in orbit or using inflatable habitats, officials said.

Overall, the Obama program will mean 2,500 more Florida jobs than the old Bush program, a senior White House official said. In addition, the commercial space industry on Tuesday released a study that said the president’s plan for private ships to fly astronauts to and from the space station would result in 11,800 jobs.

Discovery Launch Delayed Again By NASA

NASA has postponed the launch of the space shuttle Discovery for a fourth time, but without setting a new target date to send the orbiter to the International Space Station (ISS).

The decision was announced after a 13-hour meeting of a team in charge of preparation for the launch, which said it wanted to conduct further tests on three flow control valves.

The launch was initially scheduled for February 12. Then it was delayed until February 19 and then again until around February 27.

“At this point I want to make sure we get a measured approach to fly and we are ready to move in the right configuration,” Bill Gersteinmaier, an assistant administrator at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, told reporters.

“We will take a look at it and we will know for sure on Wednesday,” he added.

The delays were announced as a precaution to test three flow control valves that channel gaseous hydrogen from the shuttle’s three main engines.

The shuttle’s valves have come under close scrutiny since a valve aboard space shuttle Endeavour was found to be damaged after its 16-day mission to the orbiting ISS in November.

Discovery’s seven astronauts, including one from Japan, are to deliver the fourth and last pair of power-generating solar panels to the ISS.

The double antenna is needed to produce enough electricity to conduct all scientific experiments in the new Japanese and European laboratories that were added to the ISS last year.

The solar panels will also increase power generation to accommodate the expansion of the outpost’s permanent crew, from the current three people to six in May.

The ISS is scheduled to be completed in 2010, the same target date for the retirement of the US fleet of three space shuttles.

NASA Readies Space Shuttle Atlantis for Launch

NASA Readies Space Shuttle Atlantis for Launch, The US space agency is readying for the launch Monday of the space shuttle Atlantis and its crew of six astronauts to deliver equipment that will maintain the nearly completed International Space Station.Liftoff is set for 2:28 pm (1928 GMT) from the Kennedy Space Center near Cape Canaveral, Florida, NASA said.”Atlantis is ready to go, in really great shape,” said shuttle launch manager Mike Moses at a press conference.The shuttle mission is set to include three spacewalks aimed at storing space hardware on the exterior of the orbiting outpost.The 11-day space outing will be the fifth and last shuttle mission for 2009.

NASA Launches World’s new Tallest rocket

NASA launched Wednesday a new rocket it hopes will one day return astronauts to the Moon on a two-minute test flight.

The Ares I-X rocket blasted off at 11:30 am (1530 GMT) from Cape Canaveral in Florida after a series of delays due to poor weather conditions.

Standing 327 feet (100 meters) tall, the Ares I-X is the longest rocket ever built, and it was the first spacecraft the Kennedy Space Center has launched other than a shuttle in 30 years.

The Ares I-X is a prototype of the Ares I, which along with a new exploration vehicle called the Orion is intended to replace NASA’s aging shuttle fleet that is due to be retired in 2010.

NASA aims to gather data from more than 700 sensors placed along the rocket to enable engineers to fine-tune their design.

Ares and Orion are part of Constellation, NASA’s grand program to send astronauts back to the Moon by 2020, and then on to Mars and other destinations.

The test flight is crucial as the White House is considering a report ordered by President Barack Obama’s administration that raises concerns about Ares and the whole Constellation project.

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