Returning to the Moon
NASA’s new Crew Explortation Vehicle is beginning the process of taking astronauts back to the moon before the end of the next decade. Those missions may pave the way for journeys to Mars and beyond. Meanwhile, NASA will be in the beginning steps of creating a 21st century exploration system that will be reliable, versatile, safe, and affordable. Building on the best of Apollo and shuttle technology, their new spaceship will carry four astronauts to and from the moon.
The spaceship will support as many as six crewmembers on future missions as well as delivering crew and supplies to the International Space Station. Shaped like an Apollo capsule, the new crew vehicle will be three times larger which makes room for four astronauts to travel at a time. The spaceship will be reused up to ten times. Following the parachuting of the craft to dry land it can easily be recovered by NASA. The heat shield can be replaced and it can be launced again, while a backup option would be a splashdown.
Compared to Apollo, the system which will be coupled with the new lunar lander, can send twice the number of astronauts to the moon’s surface. With the missions only four to seven days, the new spaceship can stay longer. Apollo had to land along the moon’s equator while the new ship will carry enough propellant to land anywhere on the moon’s surface. Crew members can remain on the lunar surface up to six months once the outpost is established.
There will be no need for one astronaut to stay behind in lunar orbit as before. To get the crew off in space, the launch system builds on powerful, reliable, shuttle propulsion elements. Ares I is the name of the rocket that the astronauts wil launch on. For the first stage the rocket will use a single five-segment solid rocket booster, a derivative of the space shuttle’s solid rocket booster. In the second stage, the crew exploration vehicle will be powered by a liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen J-2X engine derived from the J-2 engine used on Apollo’s second stage. The Ares I can lift more than 55,000 pounds to low Earth orbit. Because of an escape rocket on top of the capsule the launch systems are ten times safer than the shuttle. If launch problems develop, the rocket can quickly blast the crew away. The new ship can carry crews and supplies to the International Space Station in about five years.
According to plans there may be as many as six trips yearly to the outpost. For now, robotic missions will lay the groundwork for lunar exploration. A permanent outpost is planned for the future because of concentrations of hydrogen, thought to be in the form of ice, and enough sunlight to provide power. NASA foresees getting to Mars with these plans. The heavy-lift system and a versatile crew capsule are a great start. Before going to Mars, a lunar outpost, three days from Earth, will provide the experience needed to move on.
This entry was posted on Saturday, February 9th, 2008 at 10:56 pm and is filed under Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
