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| Artist's conception of ULA's Atlas V rocket |
Washington: NASA partner United Launch Alliance (ULA) has completed the
fifth and final milestone for its Commercial Crew Development Round 2 (CCDev2)
agreement with the agency's Commercial Crew Program.
The Hazard, System
Safety and Probabilistic Risk Assessment detailed how ULA's Atlas V rocket
launch system hardware would ensure crew safety during launch and ascent.
"The ULA team
did an outstanding job outlining how it plans to integrate its launch vehicle
with completely different spacecraft designs," said Ed Mango, NASA's
Commercial Crew Program manager. "We commend ULA for taking on the
challenge of human spaceflight, and we look forward to learning more about
their innovative and cost-saving solutions as we continue to move forward in
developing a crew transportation capability for America."
During the year-long
unfunded partnership, five reviews by technical experts from NASA and ULA
assessed the company's design implementation plans, detailed system and
sub-system analysis, qualification, certification and flight data.
"This has been a
tremendous team effort between NASA, ULA and our commercial crew partners and
we have made a great deal of progress toward safe, affordable human
spaceflight," said George Sowers, ULA's vice president of human launch
services.
As a follow on to
CCDev2, NASA recently announced funded partnerships for the agency's Commercial
Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) initiative. Two of the three recipients,
The Boeing Company and Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC), have selected ULA's Atlas V
rocket as their launch vehicle.
"This baseline
will be used by both Boeing and SNC as they proceed into the CCiCap phase,
providing them with the confidence that the flight-proven Atlas V will be ready
to safely, reliably and cost-effectively launch," said Sowers.
With the completion
of the CCDev2 milestones, ULA establishes a technical foundation for
potentially certifying its Atlas V rocket for crewed missions. It also marks
the development of the design criteria for the rocket's emergency detection
system, which would allow crew members to escape if something were to go wrong
with either the launch vehicle or spacecraft. In addition, ULA established
requirements for its dual-engine Centaur configuration and selected the design
approaches it would take for accommodating a spacecraft and its crew at the
company's launch facility in Florida, Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral
Air Force Station.
All of NASA's
industry partners, including ULA, continue to meet their established milestones
in developing commercial crew transportation capabilities.
While NASA works with
U.S. industry partners to develop commercial spaceflight capabilities, the
agency also is developing the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System
(SLS), a crew capsule and heavy-lift rocket to provide an entirely new
capability for human exploration. Designed to be flexible for launching
spacecraft for crew and cargo missions, SLS and Orion will expand human
presence beyond low Earth orbit and enable new missions of exploration into the
solar system.