Possibility of Extending Shuttle Missions to 2015–Part II
“We want to focus on helping bridge the gap of US vehicles traveling to the ISS (International Space Station) as efficiently as possible,” wrote John Coggeshall, manager of manifest and schedules at Johnson Space Center in Houston, in the e-mail sent Wednesday.
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Last March, NASA’s Mike Griffin told the Senate that a four to six month delay would occur for the Orion crew spacecraft and the Ares launch vehicle—pushing them into the year 2015. The reasons given were the 2007 budget which denied NASA half of more than the needed $900 million increase they needed for their exploration program. “The reduction does not halt any planned work we were going to do on [Orion and Ares] but it does stretch it out,” Griffin told the Senate Commerce space and aeronautics subcommittee.
What “was involved” was the planned April 2009 test flight of the Ares I-1 rocket to the actual first operational flight, targeted no later than 2014. Capable of launching astronauts crews to not only the International Space Station but also to the moon, the spacecraft of NASA’s Orion was to replace the aging three shuttles of the space agency. Lockheed Martin was the contractor to build the Orion, which is to launch on-top of the originally planned Ares I rocket. The Ares V is a larger booster, used for hardware launches and unmanned cargo.
Meanwhile, NASA has also delayed the launching of an unmanned spacecraft until February 27, 2009, when the next launch window opens. This delay will cost NASA about $7,000 a month but for nobody to worry, as the money was built into the program’s reserves.
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