March 3, 2014

Image Caption: A mockup of Boeing's CST-100. Credit: The Boeing Company

NASA

NASAs aerospace industry partners continue to meet milestones under agreements with the agencys Commercial Crew Program (CCP), as they move forward in their development of spacecraft and rockets that will transport humans to destinations in low-Earth orbit.

Blue Origin, Boeing Space Exploration, Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) and SpaceX each are developing unique transportation systems, and each faces stringent evaluations and tests in 2014. CCPs engineering team is working closely with its partners as they develop the next generation of crewed spacecraft. NASA intends to certify and use commercial systems to fly astronauts from U.S. soil to the International Space Station, and back.

Already this year, NASA and its industry partners are making tremendous progress toward achieving the nations goal of restoring Americas capability to launch commercial passengers, including astronauts, from U.S. soil to low-Earth orbit, said Kathy Lueders, CCPs acting program manager. This year, well see hardware testing, flight demonstrations and the award of the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract. Were excited for what the rest of this year holds and look forward to highlighting the tremendous progress our partners make to advance commercial human spaceflight.

Working under Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) agreements with NASA, Boeing and SNC met key milestones in late December and throughout January. Boeing worked with United Launch Alliance to complete milestones in the development of an emergency detection system and launch vehicle adapter for the Atlas V rocket planned to launch Boeings CST-100.

United Launch Alliance was an integral partner in both of these milestones, ensuring that the launch vehicle adapter and emergency detection system were fully functioning and safe for our future passengers, said John Mulholland, vice president and program manager of Boeing Commercial Programs. A tireless engineering development and analysis effort since the preliminary design review early last year has led to the success of two critical milestone completions.

The CST-100s emergency detection system is an integrated set of hardware and software that will operate with the avionics systems of the Atlas V rocket as it lifts off and ascends into orbit. In the event of a confirmed emergency, the detection system will send a signal to the CST-100 to trigger escape thrusters on the spacecraft to push the crew out of harms way and return them safely to Earth.

Engineers ran the software through a series of emergency scenarios to verify the performance of the escape system, carefully tracking how changes in one component might affect another. The launch vehicle adapter that connects the CST-100 to the top of the rocket also received significant attention during the critical design review. Boeing demonstrated that pilots could take over control of the CST-100 and fly it through various phases of a mission successfully.

See more here:

Milestones Reached For NASA Commercial Crew Program Partners