In a clear demonstration that you can indeed do more with less, officials at Denver, Colorado-based Lockheed Martin Corp. announce that they will accelerate the development of the Orion spacecraft, and that they will be aiming to carry out a manned lunar flyby by 2016. At this point, the organization only has access to half of the workforce originally planned, but the development and testing processes are being accelerated regardless. The company is now aiming to carry out its first orbital flight test of Orion no later than 2013.
The Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) is the stripped-down version of the original, Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle concept. The latter was a part of Project Constellation, the Bush-era proposal to send humans back to the Moon by 2020.
US President Barack Obama and the Congress decided to curb funding for the entire Project, but Lockheed Martin was allowed to continue development of a simpler, more basic version of Orion.
The plan was to have the new spacecraft serve as a lifeboat on the International Space Station (ISS), a function that is now being fulfilled by two Russian Soyuz space capsules.
At this point, Lockheed engineers are on schedule. They have already finished constructing the first Orion prototype, and building the second one is now in full swing. However, both the 2013 test and 2016 launch are dependent on factors out of Lockheed's control.
A “manned mission beyond low Earth orbit and even a lunar fly by is possible in 2016 if NASA’s new heavy lift rocket is developed in time,” expert John Karas told
Universe Today in an interview.
“In order to go to the Moon, we need NASA’s new heavy lifter,” adds the official, who is the vice president of the Lockheed Martin’s Human Space Flight program. Congress has already approved plans to build such a rocket, and NASA is now being urged to basically get on with it.
“Right now we are building a brand new crew cabin for the first Orion mission; OFT-1. But everything depends on the budget. For the inaugural Orion test flight in 2013 NASA is considering a Delta IV Heavy booster rocket,” Karas adds.
“The Atlas V is not powerful enough to send the whole 50,000 pound spacecraft into orbit. With an Atlas we could only launch an Orion crew module. You would have to have delete the Service Module (SM) and /or other subsystems,” he explains further.
“It’s unlikely to have solar arrays [in the 2013 flight] without a few hundred million more bucks. The capability is money limited. The 2014 flight could be a high altitude abort test or perhaps something else. Then a full up unmanned test flight would follow in 2015,” he concludes.
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