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Nasa backs new astronaut vehicle
14 September 2011 Last updated at 11:15 ET
The design is reminiscent of the Ares V heavy-launch vehicleThe rocket design that will take humans to asteroids, Mars and beyond has been unveiled by the US space agency (Nasa).
The Space Launch System (SLS), as it is currently known, will be the most powerful launcher since the Saturn V rockets that put men on the Moon.
Atop it, Nasa plans to use the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, a capsule not unlike those of the moonshots.
The agency says the first launch of the SLS is expected to take place towards the end of 2017.
This will be an uncrewed test flight. It is estimated the project will have cost $18bn to get to that point.
“The next chapter of America’s space exploration story is being written today,” said Nasa’s top official, General Charles Bolden.
“President Obama has challenged us to be bold and dream big, and that’s exactly what we do.
“While I was proud to fly in the space shuttle, tomorrow’s explorers will dream of one day walking on Mars.”
The SLS will borrow many technologies developed for the recently retired space shuttle programme. These include the shuttle orbiter’s main engines.
But whereas the reusable orbiter had three such power units on its aft, the SLS main core stage will have five.
A further stage on top will provide additional muscle, as will shuttle-like strap-on boosters. Although, again, these will be bigger than those used on the shuttle.
The initial design calls for the SLS to be able to put 70 tonnes in a low-Earth orbit (LEO), with 130 tonnes the eventual target.
By comparison, today’s biggest commercial launch vehicles, such as the Ariane 5 or the Delta IV Heavy, can put just over 20 tonnes in LEO.
The immense lift capability is required to put all the equipment necessary in orbit to undertake a deep space mission. This would include not only the Orion capsule but perhaps a habitation module and a landing craft to go down to the surface of another planetary body.
In the case of a Mars mission, several SLS launches would probably be needed.
Wednesday’s announcement is the culmination of months of study on the part of Nasa engineers, and sometimes fractious argument with the US Congress which felt the agency was not moving fast enough on the project.
Since the retirement of the shuttle in July, America has no means of getting its own astronauts into orbit; it must rely on Russian Soyuz rockets.
Nasa has invited the private sector to sell it transportation services to the space station, but these commercially operated rockets and capsules will not be ready for flight until the middle of the decade. And, in any case, none of them will have the power or the life-support systems capable of taking astronauts beyond LEO.
In leaving routine LEO operations to the commercial sector, Nasa hopes it will have sufficient funds available to develop the SLS and Orion in time for the 2017 inaugural launch.
There is no “roadmap” yet for where the SLS and Orion might take humans, and when. President Obama has talked only about getting astronauts to an asteroid in the 2025 timeframe, and to Mars at some unspecified future date.
Other targets might include missions to geostationary orbit where telecommunications satellites sit, 36,000km above the Earth.
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