Beth Dickey/Melissa Mathews
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-2087/1272
Kelly Humphries/John Ira Petty
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
RELEASE: 07-122
REVIEWS DOCUMENT NASA'S PROGRESS ON NEXT HUMAN SPACECRAFT
HOUSTON - NASA this week wrapped up six months of system requirements
reviews for the Orion spacecraft, the Ares launch vehicles and other
support systems, bringing together the Constellation Program's list
of basic capability needs.
The Constellation Program is developing a new space transportation
system that will take astronauts to Earth orbit, the moon, and
eventually to Mars.
The basic program architecture for design, development, construction
and operation of the rockets and spacecraft remains unchanged as a
result of the reviews, but it now has a firmer foundation built
through extensive requirements allocation, reconciliation, analyses
and validation testing.
A "baseline synchronization" on May 23 followed individual systems
requirements reviews, or SRRs, by the Constellation Program and the
Orion, Ares, Ground Operations, Mission Operations and Extravehicular
Activity (spacewalk) projects. The synchronization effort was
designed to identify any conflicts or gaps between and among the
projects and the program and to establish a plan for resolving those
issues.
"This has been an eventful spring, known as the 'season of SRRs,'"
said Jeff Hanley, Constellation Program manager at NASA's Johnson
Space Center, Houston. "This summer will bring a new season of
rolling system definition reviews that will finish our requirements
for initial mission capability and set us up for our first
preliminary design reviews."
The Constellation requirements work was completed at the same time the
program was dealing with other significant challenges, including
development of an integrated test schedule, a mission manifest and a
budget profile that will support its next 20 years of work.
The program also closely followed the work of NASA's Lunar
Architecture Team, which is formulating the requirements for a lunar
surface outpost development and scientific research activities. A
lunar architecture system requirements review is expected in spring
of 2009. "This is an impressive accomplishment in a short period of
time, and I'm pleased with the dedication and cooperation across
projects and attention to detail that has gotten us this far," said
Chris Hardcastle, Constellation Program systems engineering and
integration manager at Johnson.
The next series of reviews will begin with the Orion system definition
review in August and continue through another Constellation Program
baseline synchronization in March 2008. System definition reviews
focus on emerging designs for all transportation elements and compare
the predicted performance of each element against the currently
baselined requirements.
The next significant milestones for the Constellation Program are a
preliminary design review series in summer 2008 and a critical design
review series in early 2010.
For more information about NASA's Constellation Program, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/constellation
For information about NASA and agency programs, visit:
-end-
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