14 DAY TRIAL // The American space agency has been given a week to come up with new documents detailing cost estimates and possible schedules concerning the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle. Originally a part of Project Constellation – the ambitious initiative to return humans to the Moon by 2020 – the capsule is currently being revamped completely. Under the 2011 budget proposal set forth by President Barack Obama, the capsule would be stripped down to a lifeboat status, which means that it would only act as an escape pod for the crew of the International Space Station (ISS), Space reports.
Officials from the US House Science and Technology Committee became very interested in how the new, stripped-down version of Orion would look like, and now want to know when such a spacecraft could be ready. In the original designs, the capsule was one of the main elements on which the return of astronautics to the Moon depended. It could carry a crew of three or four, and it would have been launched aboard the now-scrapped ARES I delivery system. Once in orbit, it would have rendezvoused with the Earth-Departure Stage (a rocket engine) and the Altair lunar lander, and then headed towards Earth's natural satellite.
But the new budget proposal will not allow Orion to perform any of that. The capsule is to become a simple escape one for the ISS, and the Committee is currently trying to determine whether the contract NASA has with Lockheed Martin needs to be renegotiated, modified, or scrapped altogether. There are some who say a new bid needs to be held, to assign the development of the Orion capsule to another firm, even though Lockheed has been in charge of the spacecraft since day one. According to Bob Jacobs, a NASA spokesman, the agency is committed to giving the House Science and Technology Committee the documents it needs.
“We will work to provide the requested budgetary information as requested by the Committee leadership. There is an internal team within Exploration Systems making the Orion assessments,” Jacobs told reporters two days ago. “As the committee prepares to move forward with an authorization for the agency, it is essential that we have the agency's justification for these significant programmatic and funding changes,” reads the letter Committee members sent to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. The deadline for providing the new documents is June 16, the same source reveals.