NASA selects Lockheed Martin as builder of Orion spacecraft

The US space agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on Thursday has selected Lockheed Martin Corp. as the prime contractor to design, develop, and build a new spacecraft dubbed Orion, America's spacecraft that is to replace the space shuttle and eventually carry astronauts to the moon and beyond.

Lockheed Martin, who has won a multibillion-dollar contract from NASA to build the nation’s next spaceship for human flight, beated out a group that included Northrop Grumman and Boeing for the multi-billion-dollar contract.

NASA started working with both the contractor teams since July 2005 to perform concept refinement, trade studies, analysis of requirements and preliminary design options, and now selected Lockheed Martin, the aerospace leader that usually builds unmanned rockets and spacecraft, for the design, development, testing, and evaluation of the new spacecraft. The process is expected to last from Sept. 8, 2006 to Sept. 7, 2013.

Emphasizing on their criteria for the selection, Doug Cooke, a deputy associate administrator who led the selection team said the Lockheed Martin design looked “achievable,” an indication that it trusted more heavily on known technologies than developing new ones. “This is a design that is based on known capabilities,” he added.

The space agency intends to have the Orion spaceship ready for its first manned flight by 2014 and a moon mission no later than 2020. The agency also intends to use the capsule to eventually send humans to Mars.

The capsule will replace the three-shuttle fleet that is to be retired in 2010.

"Orion will be capable of transporting four crewmembers for lunar missions and later supporting crew transfers for Mars missions. Orion could also carry up to six crew members to and from the International Space Station (ISS)," NASA said.
According to the NASA, the later version, which would take four astronauts to the moon, would use a separate lander ship to reach the surface.

The initial phase is estimated at 3.9 billion dollars through 2013 for designing, developing, testing and evaluating the new craft and building two for initial flights into space. A second stage, from 2009 to 2019, conferred Lockheed Martin with $3.5 billion for building an unspecified number of manned ships to go to the space station and the moon, and some cargo-only versions for supplying the station. The deal also includes $750 million for engineering work to modify or improve the aircrafts.

This is the major victory for the Bethesda, Maryland based Lockheed and this will be the first chance that Lockheed has been given a lead role in manned space flight. Before this, the company failed in a 1996 attempt to design the X-33 space ship, which was to be build as a replacement for the quarter-century-old shuttle fleet but was relinquished because of technical problems after NASA spent more than $900 million on it.

Meanwhile, Lockheed intends to spread out the work on the program in a number of locations where NASA already has a strong economic and political presence. Work is expected to be performed in Houston, where Lockheed estimates that 1,200 new jobs will be created; in Denver, with 500 new jobs; in Florida, with 300; and at the Michoud unit in New Orleans, with 200.