The Space Shot

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--Running a day late, NASA launched its 33-story Ares I-X rocket on a $445 million unmanned test flight Wednesday, a spectacular six-minute sub-orbital mission to collect data needed for the design of NASA's proposed shuttle replacement.

"Oh, man! Well, how impressive is that?" Program Manager Jeff Hanley told the launch team after the spent rocket fell back to the Atlantic Ocean. "I hope you appreciate that you've accomplished a great step forward for exploration."

Said Launch Director Ed Mango: "Think about what we just did. Our first flight test, and the only thing we're waiting on is weather. That says you all did frickin' fantastic! So thank you very much."

Vapor clouds form around NASA's unmanned Ares I-X rocket as it accelerates through the region of maximum aerodynamic pressure less than a minute after liftoff Tuesday.

(Credit: Ben Cooper/Spaceflight Now)

The 327-foot-tall unmanned rocket roared to life at 11:30 a.m. EDT and majestically climbed away from launch complex 39B at the Kennedy Space Center atop a torrent of 5,000-degree flame and a cloud of churning exhaust.

Liftoff came three-and-a-half hours behind schedule because of overnight thunderstorms and nearby lightning strikes that required unplanned tests, along with cloudy weather that posed a risk of static charge buildups that could have interfered with communications.

The weather went in and out of limits all morning, but a break in the cloud cover gave Mango the window he needed to come out of a hold at the T-minus four-minute mark and proceed on to launch.

When the countdown hit zero, four massive hold-down bolts exploded, the booster's load of solid propellant ignited and the rocket began climbing away.

An instant after booster ignition, the rocket's nozzle moved slightly to steer the Ares I-X away from the gantry, preventing the hot exhaust from hitting launch pad structures. The maneuver was apparent to the unaided eye and the rocket stayed well away from the gantry.

Using a four-segment space shuttle solid-fuel booster as the first stage and a dummy upper stage simulator, the unusual-looking rocket - the tallest launcher since NASA's huge Saturn 5 moon rocket - cleared the gantry in about six seconds and then soared away to the East.

The Ares I-X rocket blasts off from pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center.

(Credit: Ben Cooper/Spaceflight Now)

It was the first launching in NASA's post-Columbia Constellation program, which calls for development of manned and unmanned Ares rockets, Orion crew capsules and landers designed to support Antarctica-style moon bases in the 2020s.

But the Obama administration is re-evaluating NASA's manned space program and whether it makes sense to return to the moon while assessing a report from an independent panel of experts that concluded NASA did not have enough money to carry out the Constellation program.

The panel suggested it would make more sense to abandon the Ares I rocket in favor of rockets and crew capsules provide by private industry on a commercial basis. Under that approach, NASA could focus on development of the heavy lift rockets needed to carry astronauts to a variety of deep-space targets.

Given the political uncertainty in Washington, it's unclear if the Ares I rocket that Tuesday's test flight was designed to support will ever actually fly.

But NASA managers and engineers were elated to get the huge test rocket off the ground and the towering booster lived up to expectations, putting on a spectacular show for space center workers, area residents, and tourists.

"Vindication really does not describe it well," Hanley said after the flight. "It's a sense of validation that the course that we had laid out is executable. An early demonstration like this puts aside any doubt in our minds, if we had them, as to the flyability of this particular design.

"We have a design that will do the country service, if it is put into service," he said. "The performance of the vehicle was very pleasing, to put it mildly."

Twenty seconds after liftoff, the rocket reached its maximum thrust of 3.16 million pounds of push with an internal pressure of 895 pounds per square inch.

The flight plan called for the rocket's nozzle to move back and forth 0.12 degrees 34 seconds after liftoff in a "programmed test input" to collect data on the stiffness of the vehicle and how it responded to dynamic changes.

The results of the nozzle deflections were too subtle to be visible to the unaided eye and the rocket appeared to stay solidly on course as it accelerated through the sound barrier 39 seconds after liftoff.

Long-range tracking cameras showed the rocket making only slight rolling motions about its long axis as small roll control rockets fired to maintain the proper orientation. Roll control was a question mark early on in the rocket's development, but engineers said it was not a problem in flight.

Another "programmed test input" - moving the nozzle by 0.12 degrees - presumably began at 55 seconds into flight. Five seconds after that, the Ares I-X was expected to experience maximum dynamic pressure of 850 pounds per square foot, subjecting the booster to the greatest stress it would experience in flight.

A 0.35 degree programmed test input was planned for 75 seconds into flight with a final 1-degree side-to-side yaw maneuver scheduled for 93.6 seconds.

The rocket accelerated to a peak velocity of about 4.5 times the speed of sound, reaching an altitude of 25.2 miles. At that point, when the rocket's thrust fell to less than 40,000 pounds of push, an explosive charge fired to separate the first stage from the dummy upper stage.

A wide-angle shot of the Ares I-X rocket climbing away through a partly cloudy sky.

(Credit: Ben Cooper/Spaceflight Now)

An instant later, eight upward-firing rockets at the base of the booster ignited to back the first stage away from the second, a maneuver clearly visible in long-range tracking camera views.

But in a departure from the expected flight program, the dummy second stage went into a flat tumble as it continued along its ballistic trajectory instead of maintaining a nose-forward orientation. The dummy upper stage rose to a maximum altitude of about 150,000 feet before arcing over and plunging back to Earth 150 miles east of the space center.

In a final major test, three 150-foot-wide parachutes were designed to deploy to lower the spent first-stage booster casing to the Atlantic Ocean where a NASA recovery ship was standing by to tow it back to Port Canaveral. A camera on the rocket showed a smaller drogue parachute deployed, but video stopped moments later and the main chutes were not seen.

But the recovery ship quickly located the booster and a NASA spokesman said the crew of an aircraft flying over the floating rocket later said all three parachutes were visible in the water. An initial assessment, sources said, indicated normal blistering on the rocket and a dent of unknown origin in the aft segment.

"We completely met our success criteria, in fact we blew them away," said Mission Manager Bob Ess. "The first one was to roll out (to the launch pad), obviously we did that one. Clear the pad, we did that without a problem. Fly the intended flight path, we certainly did that, we confirmed that. And the last one was to learn from the flight.

"So far, we're on a path to learn a lot. The separation seemed a little different than we predicted as far as how the upper stage reacted after separation. So right there's an opportunity for us to jump in and figure out what was different in the actual flight from our models. So, hugely successful."

It will take engineers several weeks to complete a quick-look analysis of data from more than 700 sensors that measured pressures, stresses, temperatures, and other factors throughout the flight. But the initial results indicated no major problems.

Amid work to ready NASA's Ares I-X rocket for a long-awaited test flight next week, a presidential panel charged with reviewing the nation's manned space program submitted its completed report Thursday, concluding NASA's planned shuttle replacement will cost too much and take too long to build to be a viable option.

Even so, panel members said they looked forward to the $445 million test flight Tuesday and the data it will generate to help validate computer models and processes that will be useful in any future rocket design efforts.

"We do think it's appropriate to fly the Ares I-X," said Norman Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed Martin and chairman of the U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans Committee. "We think there are important things to be learned that will help the program."

Norman Augustine, left, chairman of a presidential review of manned space options, and panel member Edward Crawley, right, brief reporters Thursday.

(Credit: NASA)

The panel's completed report contained no major surprises--an executive summary was released in late September that included the same five basic options for future manned space activity--but the coincidental timing of the report and next week's test flight highlighted the uncertain future of NASA's plans to replace the space shuttle and return to the moon.

"The premier conclusion of the committee is the human spaceflight program the United States is currently pursuing is one that's on an unsustainable trajectory," said Augustine. "We say that because of a mismatch between the scope of the program and the funds to support the program. That's of great concern to us because human spaceflight, where safety accounts for everything, is a very unforgiving sort of pursuit."

In the wake of the 2003 Columbia disaster, the Bush administration ordered NASA to finish the International Space Station and retire the shuttle by the end of 2010, and to develop new rockets and spacecraft to return astronauts to the moon by the early 2020s.

The plan NASA developed--the Constellation program--calls for a new rocket known as the Ares I, and an Apollo-like crew capsule called Orion, to ferry astronauts to and from low-Earth orbit. A large, unmanned heavy lift rocket known as the Ares V then would be built to launch Orion capsules and lunar landers to the moon.

President Obama expressed general support for the Constellation program during the presidential campaign, but earlier this year he ordered an independent review of NASA's manned space program in the context of the current budget environment. At the same time, the Office of Management and Budget cut some $3 billion from NASA's projected "out-years" budget, money earmarked for development of the Ares V.

Against that uncertain backdrop, NASA pressed ahead with development of the Orion capsule and the Ares I booster envisioned as a replacement for the space shuttle. The new rocket features an extended shuttle solid-fuel booster, a hydrogen-fueled upper stage and an escape rocket that could pull the crew capsule to safety in an emergency.

NASA plans to launch a test version of the rocket Tuesday on a sub-orbital flight to verify computer models being developed to help design the Ares I. For the test flight, a standard four-segment shuttle booster is being used, along with a dummy upper stage and an Orion capsule simulator that duplicate the mass and shape of the Ares I rocket.

"We've reviewed the Ares I and Orion elements of that program, which are the two parts that are principally underway," Augustine said Thursday. "We found those programs to be reasonably well managed, we found them to have technical problems of a nature that's probably not uncommon for complex undertakings of this type.

"It's our belief that given ample time and funds, the engineers at NASA and their contractors are certainly capable of solving those problems. So we think the program within itself has a very good likelihood of succeeding. The issue that comes up under Ares I is whether the program is useful when it has succeeded because of a mismatch of the time schedules and the costs with what will be needed for it to do."

While that observation suggests Augustine and the panel do not support continued development of Ares I, panel member Leroy Chiao, a former astronaut, said "it's important to emphasize that we were presenting options, not recommendations."

"Despite what's been going on in the blogosphere, the panel didn't come up saying (NASA) should cancel Ares I, which a lot of people think we actually did," he said in a telephone interview. "It's really up to the decision makers as to which path to go down. So Ares I is not dead by a long shot."

NASA believes the Ares I could be ready to fly by 2015. The Augustine panel concluded it would take until at least 2017 to complete the work, coming on line too late to provide more than token support to the International Space Station. In the meantime, NASA will be forced to buy seats on Russian Soyuz rockets, at $50 million per ticket, to get U.S. astronauts to and from the lab complex.

The Augustine report also concluded that NASA will be unable to extend human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit without additional funding, suggesting an additional $3 billion per year, plus a hedge against inflation, to fund a realistic space exploration program.

The panel did not make recommendations, but members seem to favor a commercially developed launch system to get astronauts to low-Earth orbit and a government-developed heavy lift rocket to extend human exploration to the moon and beyond.

The so-called "flexible path" option presented by the Augustine panel would allow NASA to launch orbital moon missions and even flights around Mars or to its moons by the early to mid 2020s, while long-term development of landers and associated hardware is developed in parallel.

"The current plan focuses on going to the moon (with) the longer term goal of going to Mars," Augustine said. "There are a lot of things one could do along the way that are very interesting, that let you build up gradually to the immense undertaking of the Mars program.

"The sort of thing we're thinking of, one could fly circumlunar missions, you could circumnavigate Mars, you could land on an asteroid, a near-Earth object, you could land on Phobos or Deimos, the martian moons, and do some very exciting science from there. It seems to us that is a more sensible program than to wait 15 years or so for the first major event."

A White House spokesman thanked the panel for its report, saying "the president has on numerous occasions confirmed his commitment to human space exploration, and the goal of ensuring that the nation is on a vigorous and sustainable path to achieving our boldest aspirations in space."

"Against a backdrop of serious challenges with the existing program, the Augustine committee has offered several key findings and a range of options for how the nation might improve its future human space flight activities," he said. "We will be reviewing the committee's analysis, and then ultimately the president will be making the final decisions."

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--NASA's towering Ares I-X rocket was hauled to the launch pad early Tuesday for blastoff October 27 on a $445 million unmanned test flight that likely will play a major role in the ongoing debate about NASA's post-shuttle manned space program.

The slow trip to pad 39B began at 1:39 a.m. EDT Tuesday when a powerful crawler-transporter carrying the Ares I-X rocket and its mobile launch platform slowly pulled out of the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center. Powerful spotlights illuminated the vehicle as it emerged from the VAB, providing a spectacular view of the slender white rocket against the dark of a cloudy night.

The Ares I-X rocket begins the slow trip from the Vehicle Assembly Building to launch pad 39B for work to ready the booster for launch Oct. 27.

(Credit: Justin Ray/Spaceflight Now)

The tip of the 327-foot-tall rocket, anchored to the mobile launch platform by four massive bolts at the base of the booster's flared aft skirt, was expected to sway back and forth up to a foot during rollout, depending on the wind and other factors. But data from sensors measuring stresses on the four hold-down posts indicated the rocket was stiffer than computer models suggested and the booster was mounted atop pad 39B without incident by 9:17 a.m.

"This is great, this is huge," said Bob Ess, the Ares I-X mission manager. "This is a milestone that's been in our planning for years, rollout to the pad. It's hard to believe it's here. We've been doing this for three-and-a-half, four years and there it is, all done. It's ready to fly."

Liftoff is targeted for 8 a.m. on October 27. Backup opportunities are available October 28 and 29 if needed.

The Ares I rocket is a key element in NASA's post-shuttle Constellation program, which calls for replacing the iconic orbiters with a safer, lower-cost rocket to ferry astronauts to low-Earth orbit and development of a large, unmanned heavy lift rocket - the Ares V - that would support eventual expeditions to the moon.

The Obama administration currently is reassessing NASA's manned space program and evaluating five options developed by an independent panel of space experts led by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine. Only one of the five options includes the Ares I. But in recent hearings, lawmakers expressed reluctance to scrap the Constellation architecture and it's not yet clear what action the Obama administration might take, or when a decision will be made.

Given that backdrop in the policy arena, the planned test flight of the Ares I-X could prove critical to the future of the Constellation program. While a success would not guarantee a continuation of Constellation, a failure could prove fatal.

"You can't avoid that," former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, who oversaw the implementation of the Constellation program, said in an interview. "Now, I'll say right on the heels of that remark I think that's regrettable. You don't hinge decision making on one test flight. I mean, that's not good engineering. But I think it's unavoidable that policy makers will look to the success or failure of this flight as a key to future decisions."

The 1.8-million-pound Ares I-X rocket is made up of a four-segment shuttle solid-fuel booster, a dummy fifth segment, a dummy second stage, and a mockup of an Orion crew capsule and escape rocket. More than 700 sensors are mounted on the rocket to determine actual performance and the stresses the vehicle experiences, along with three television cameras.

NASA's Ares I-X rocket is moved into position atop pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center.

(Credit: William Harwood)

Like any shuttle booster, the Ares I-X will fire for two minutes, boosting the vehicle to an altitude of about 130,000 feet and a velocity of nearly five times the speed of sound. At that point, roughly 43 miles due east of the Kennedy Space Center, the first stage will separate from the dummy upper stage and fall to the Atlantic Ocean in a test of new parachutes designed for the operational Ares I. The dummy upper stage, which will not be recovered, will crash into the ocean some 147 miles from the space center.

The cost of the Ares I-X project, including the rocket, launch pad modifications, computer modeling and data analysis, is expected to be around $445 million.

"We're incredibly excited to be on the cusp of flying the system, seeing what Ares I can do," Jeff Hanley, Constellation program manager at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, told CBS News.

The goals of the test flight are to verify computer models and flight characteristics during the critical first two minutes of flight when aerodynamic stresses are most severe.

While the real Ares I rocket features a first-stage booster with five fuel segments, engineers say the four-segment Ares I-X vehicle will closely mimic the flying characteristics of the manned version.

Engineers are especially interested in the acoustic environment a few seconds after launch, when the reflected sound of the accelerating booster hits the vehicle, causing vibrations that will be transmitted through the structure, and later, when the rocket accelerates through the speed of sound and then experiences maximum dynamic pressure, or "max Q."

A space shuttle typically experiences between 720 and 750 pounds per square foot at max Q, but Ares 1-X will experience around 850 psf. Data from the test flight will tell engineers what sort of environmental conditions sensitive electronics might be subjected to and whether mitigations are needed.

Other areas of interest are longitudinal thrust oscillations and how much the vehicle rolls about its long axis.

Based on data from recent shuttle flights and the test firing of a five-segment Ares booster in Utah, Hanley said engineers do not believe thrust oscillation, a phenomenon that occurs toward the end of a booster's firing, is a major problem. Even so, current plans for the Ares I rocket call for springs, part of a passive "soft-ride" system, to be used between the first and second stages and between the second stage and the Orion crew capsule to damp out any significant vibrations.

Engineers also are studying an innovative system that would use the mass of the second-stage liquid oxygen in an eventual manned rocket to damp out unwanted vibration.

Roll control also doesn't appear to be a major issue, engineers say. All solid-fuel rockets experience some amount of roll due to the behavior of the high-speed exhaust plume and Ares I-X is equipped with roll control thrusters on the dummy second stage to counteract any unwanted motion.

Another issue involves the rocket's sideways drift as it climbs away from the launch pad. For the Ares I-X launch, the booster's nozzle will be canted slightly just after ignition to ensure a "walk-off" away from the launch pad gantry. This is not intended to prevent a crash into the tower, which engineers say is not a concern. Rather, it is to prevent the rocket's exhaust plume from damaging the pad if the launch-day winds push it toward the gantry.

NASA's embattled Constellation moon program, thought by many to be on life support in the face of ongoing budget cuts, is technically feasible, "soundly" managed, and capable of putting American astronauts back on the moon as planned in the 2020s, the chairman of a manned space review said Tuesday.

But if the Obama administration and Congress fail to restore some $3 billion in lost funding, he said, NASA will be unable to return to the moon or venture beyond the confines of low-Earth orbit.

A NASA graphic showing the proposed Ares 1 rocket intended to boost Orion crew capsules into low-Earth orbit.

(Credit: NASA)

Norman Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed Martin and chairman of Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee, told the House Committee on Science and Technology that he would not endorse any one of the panel's five options and their variants, but he agreed there should be "compelling reasons" to cancel a program, like Constellation, that is already in motion.

And neither he nor Edward Crawley, a panel member and engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who oversaw the development of the options submitted to the White House, offered any such compelling reasons.

"There were on our committee a number of people who actually built space flight hardware and their general consensus on the assessment of the Constellation program technically is it has problems, all real programs where you're really building hardware encounter developmental problems, but that we didn't see any...that were not surmountable with proper engineering talent and skill, which we believe NASA can bring to bear," Crawley said.

Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.), chairman of the Science and Technology committee, observed that Constellation was a congressionally authorized program that represented a significant expenditure to date.

"I don't think you trade what you know for what you don't know if it's equal or a little bit better," Gordon said. "So are you prepared to say that one or all of the other options are substantially better than Constellation and worth having a major turn now?"

"I think it would be our view, just what you said, there should be a compelling reason to change an existing program," Augustine replied. "We believe the existing program, given adequate funds, is executable and would carry out its objectives."

Gordon and virtually every other committee member who spoke Tuesday questioned the wisdom of changing direction and expressed support for trying to come up with the money needed to turn Constellation into reality.

"Mr. Chairman, in many ways it's hard for me to understand why the president is seeking new options at all when there's been an agreed upon plan for several years," said Rep. Ralph Hall (R-Texas), the committee's ranking Republican. "Why don't we just fund the program we've all agreed to? Why should multibillion-dollar bailouts of banks and insurance companies come at the expense of our talented scientists, our engineers, and technicians who make the impossible look easy?

"I think many of us think it would take a very small fraction of our federal budget, just tenths of one percent, to make a significant difference in our human spaceflight goals," Hall said. "But even if that level of funding is not forthcoming, we have to be very careful how we proceed because we have a lot at stake."

Mike Griffin, NASA's former administrator and the man in charge when the Constellation program was developed, put the debate in stark terms. Since 1994, he said, NASA's annual budget has suffered a 20 percent decline in real dollars.

"At this time a year ago, the original budget for exploration had already been eroded by some $12 billion to pay for other things," he said. "The budget submitted this past May erodes that further to the point where some $30 billion has, if those plans go forward, been removed from space exploration.

"The issue is money. That issue renders moot all other debate as to what other destinations we might pursue, whether they're the moon, near Earth asteroids, Mars or any debate about how we might get there. On the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11, this is a sobering thought...I hope I'm not the only one who finds it shameful we're in this position."

The Constellation program was born in the wake of the 2003 Columbia disaster. The Bush administration decided in January 2004 to finish the International Space Station and to retire the shuttle in 2010. At the same time, NASA was told to begin development of a replacement system that could ferry astronauts to and from the space station and eventually, on to the moon, a system that would be safer and less expensive to operate than the shuttle.

The long-range goal was establishment of Antarctica-type lunar research stations in the early 2020s where astronauts can live and work for months at a time.

NASA's answer to this new direction was the Constellation program. Two rockets were envisioned, the manned Ares 1, designed to boost Apollo-like Orion crew capsules to low-Earth orbit, and the unmanned Ares 5, a huge heavy lift rocket that will carry a four-person lunar lander into space.

The Bush administration did not give NASA much in the way of additional funding to pay for initial Constellation development and the agency was forced to cut back in other areas to kick start the new program.

Given the lack of funding up front, development of the Ares 1 has lagged and now won't be available until at least 2015. During the five-year gap between the end of shuttle operations and the debut of Ares 1/Orion, NASA will be forced to buy seats on Russian Soyuz spacecraft, at $50 million each, to ferry U.S. and international astronauts to and from the space station.

During the presidential campaign, Obama expressed support for the Constellation program and it's long-range goal of returning to the moon. But after his election, the Office of Management and Budget cut another $3.1 billion from NASA's long-range budget, money that was critical to initial development of the new Ares 5 booster. Those cuts, on top of earlier reductions, have left NASA in what the Augustine panel described as an untenable position.

"The reluctant bottom line conclusion of our committee is that the current program as it's being pursued is not executable, that we're on a path that will not lead to a useful, safe human exploration program and the reason for that is the mismatch between the tasks to be performed and the funds available to support those tasks," Augustine said Tuesday.

The Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee reviewed NASA's current plans, alternatives, and also considered how long the U.S. agency and its partners should operate the International Space Station. NASA currently has no money in its projected downstream budget to operate the space station beyond 2015.

In its executive summary--the group's final report is not yet complete--the panel did not make any recommendations. Instead, it listed five options, or architectures, and the pros and cons associated with each. The first two options assume NASA is forced to live within current 2010 budget projections.

In one, the shuttle is retired on schedule and the space station is deorbited in 2015 or 2016. Under that scenario, the panel concluded, NASA would not be able to return to the moon until the 2030s or later. In the other "constrained budget" case, the shuttle is retired, the station is extended through 2020, the Ares 1 is canceled and NASA relies instead on the commercial development of new rockets to to carry astronauts to low-Earth orbit. Under that scenario, the panel said, a heavy lift rocket is delayed to the late 2020s and no money is available to develop lunar landing technologies.

The panel's final three options assume NASA's exploration budget is boosted by $3 billion and then allowed to grow each year at 2.4 percent to offset inflation.

Option No. 3 is basically NASA's Constellation program as currently envisioned, with shuttle retirement in early 2011 and no additional money for operation of the International Space Station past 2015. In that case, the panel concluded, NASA could, in fact, return to the moon in the mid 2020s.

Option No. 4 would extend the station through 2020 and retain the moon as the nation's primary target beyond low-Earth orbit. But it would rely on development of commercial access to low-Earth orbit. In one variant, the shuttle is retired and NASA builds an Ares 5 Lite to launch crew and cargo to the moon. In the other, the shuttle program is extended and a new heavy lifter based on shuttle technology is developed for moon flights.

Option No. 5 represents a so-called "flexible path" architecture that would explore the inner solar system with long-duration flights to a variety of targets, ranging from lunar orbit to the moons of Mars. The long-range goals could include lunar landings and eventual flights to Mars itself. This scenario assumes development of commercial launchers, shuttle retirement and no station extension.

Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), chairwoman of the House subcommittee on space and aeronautics, was critical of the Augustine panel's options, saying "I thought we were going to take a hard, cold, sobering look at the Constellation program and tell us exactly what we needed to do here in Congress, with our budget, in order to maximize the chances of success. But that's not what I see."

"So I guess I'll ask my colleagues on this committee, what are we going to do with this report? I know that we are going to see more details. But in the absence of mismanagement or technological show stoppers...none of which the Augustine panel has indicated has occurred in this program, can any of us in good conscience recommend canceling the exploration systems development programs that Congress has funded and supported over the past four years?"

Giffords said she did not see "the logic of scrapping what the nation has spent years and billions of dollars to develop."

Keeping the $75 billion International Space Station operational through at least 2020 seems to be a given regardless of which option is ultimately approved. In his written remarks to the Science and Technology Committee, Griffin reflected the views of many when he said "any discussion of decommissioning and deorbiting the ISS is irrelevant to the consideration of serious programmatic options."

JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, Houston--A presidential panel wrapping up a review of future U.S. manned space flight options delivered a grim assessment Wednesday, showing NASA's current plan to retire the shuttle, finish the space station and return to the moon by the early 2020s is not remotely feasible without a significant restoration of previously cut funding.

In the absence of a major spending increase, "our view is that it will be difficult with the current budget to do anything that's terribly inspiring in the human spaceflight area," said Norman Augustine, chairman of the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee.

Augustine's committee was set up by the Obama administration to examine NASA's current plans for retiring the shuttle, completing the space station, and returning to the moon as well as alternative strategies for moving beyond low-Earth orbit.

Anticipated funding versus currently planned budget - a $3 billion annual shortfall - threatens NASA's planned return to the moon by the early 2020s.

(Credit: NASA)

The committee also is assessing how long NASA and its partners should operate the International Space Station. NASA currently has no money in its projected downstream budget to operate the $100 billion lab complex beyond 2015.

The Augustine committee believes the station cannot be operated without direct U.S. mission control and management and that it will cost some $1.5 billion to safely drive the huge complex out of orbit at the end of its life, whenever that might be.

NASA's current long-range plan, developed by the Bush administration in the wake of the 2003 Columbia disaster, is to complete the space station, retire the shuttle fleet, and develop a Apollo-like Orion crew capsule that will be launched to the station by new Ares 1 rockets.

During the gap between shuttle operations and the debut of Ares-1/Orion, U.S. astronauts will have to hitch rides to the station aboard Russian Soyuz rockets. NASA managers have assumed all along the station program would be extended and Ares 1/Orion would be used to deliver crews and supplies.

NASA also plans to develop a huge new unmanned heavy lift rocket called the Ares 5 that eventually will boost Orion capsules and Altair lunar landers to the moon for long-duration exploration. The Orion capsule, Ares rockets and lunar landers are the central pieces in NASA's Constellation program.

But during a final public hearing Wednesday in Washington, the Augustine panel provided a sobering look at NASA's projected budget and the requirements of various manned space flight scenarios.

Considering the Constellation program as the "program of record," panel member and former astronaut Sally Ride said NASA would need an additional $50 billion or so through 2020 to implement the program as currently planned. This scenario is known as the "unconstrained budget" case.

Former astronaut Sally Ride confers with manned space committee Chairman Norman Augustine before the start of a final public hearing Wednesday in Washington.

(Credit: NASA)

It assumes the shuttle is retired on schedule and that the space station is deorbited in early 2016, an option no one on the panel seems to favor. In that scenario, the new Orion/Ares 1 system would have no destination until the Ares 5 heavy lifter debuted and moon flights began after 2021.

"In the unconstrained budget, Orion and Ares 1 arrive shortly after ISS is deorbited," Ride said. "And then you get human lunar return in 2021."

Assuming NASA is forced to live within the 2010 budget guidelines provided by the Obama administration, the Ares 5 heavy lift moon rocket would not be ready until the 2028 timeframe.

Reeling from projected budget cuts totaling more than $3 billion through 2013, NASA managers and engineers working to build a post-shuttle rocket system for an eventual return to the moon are bracing for a critical review that could set the agency on a different course.

The review was ordered by the Obama administration. The chairman of the independent review panel charged with evaluating NASA's post-shuttle manned space program said Friday he will bring an open mind and "go where the facts lead" in assessing the technical and economic feasibility of the space agency's current manned space program.

Norman Augustine, former chief executive officer of Lockheed Martin, said the "Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans" committee also will assess alternatives, including different rocket systems and alternative targets for exploration. The team's report is expected by August.

Concept drawing of Orion crew capsule and moon lander in lunar orbit.

(Credit: NASA)

"We are planning to spend billions of dollars on the human space flight program and it's wise to be sure we're spending that the way we should," he told reporters in a teleconference. "New information becomes available all the time. And similarly, we have a new administration and it would probably be imprudent on their part not to examine this major of a program to be sure such a long term undertaking is still on a course that makes sense to them."

The cost of NASA's manned space program--and ongoing efforts by the Office of Management and Budget to cut spending--is at the heart of the review, announced Thursday when the Obama administration's fiscal 2010 budget request was unveiled.

"I think what it boils down to is we're being told there's no sense in being unrealistic and putting together a program that can't possibly be afforded, and we've been given some guidance," Augustine said. "I think one of the chronic problems NASA's encountered over the years has been that it usually had more programs than it had money. That can be dangerous when you're doing something as difficult as NASA does.

"So as we go through this evaluation, if we were to find there were reasons the budget didn't make sense in any way, I can assure you we would not be bashful about pointing that out, and I suspect the administration would want to know that anyway."

The Obama administration is asking Congress for $18.7 billion in funding for NASA in 2010, a watershed year for the civilian space agency as it tries to complete assembly of the International Space Station and retire the space shuttle fleet after just nine more flights.

NASA is designing a new rocket, called the Ares 1, and an Apollo-style Orion capsule to replace the shuttle, but the new system will not be ready for routine use until 2015. During the five years between the shuttle's retirement next year and the debut of Ares 1/Orion, NASA will be forced to buy seats on Russian Soyuz rockets to get U.S. astronauts to and from the space station.

NASA's long-range goal, set by the Bush administration, is to return to the moon by 2020, using Ares 1/Orion spacecraft to carry astronauts to orbit and then new heavy-lift Ares 5 rockets to boost the astronauts and lunar landers to the moon. The new rocket systems are the central elements of what NASA calls the Constellation program.

But funding has been a critical issue from the beginning. Congress and the Bush administration, which put NASA on its current course, did not provide the funding necessary to significantly reduce the gap between shuttle retirement and first flight of Ares 1/Orion.

The Obama administration's 2010 budget includes a near-term funding boost of $630 million for Constellation, thanks in part to about $1 billion routed to NASA as part of the economic Recovery Act.

But the administration's predicted budgets through 2013 show an overall cut of $3.1 billion for the exploration systems directorate in charge of Constellation, cuts that have sent shock waves through the NASA community.

"That's the real story," a senior space manager, who asked not to be named, said of NASA's Thursday budget briefing. "It's like that Sherlock Holmes thing, the real story is the dog that didn't bark in the night...If the three-plus billion dollars in the out years, if that cut stands, then there's no moon by 2020 and maybe none at all."

The Obama administration ordered the Augustine review of NASA's ongoing manned space exploration program against this backdrop, prompting speculation that budget pressures could lead to a major change of course. It's not yet known how any such a change might affect the gap between shuttle and any follow-on spacecraft, or whether the moon will even remain NASA's primary target.

"I must confess, as an individual, I'm not thrilled with the fact that we have a gap," Augustine said. "But we have what we have...There are things that could be done, probably, that would shorten the gap, there are some things one might do that would lengthen the gap. But certainly, an objective, I think, of anybody would be to balance the various pros and cons of whatever is proposed against the impact on the gap, among other things, and recognizing that extending the gap is probably not a desirable thing. On the other hand, and I'm not making predictions here because I don't know the outcome, it's not something that's written in stone, either."

A longer version of this story is available on the CBS News Space Place web site.

The Obama administration's fiscal 2010 NASA budget request includes $630 million in additional near-term funding for development of follow-on rockets and spacecraft needed for the agency's post-shuttle moon program, officials said Thursday. But most of the increase is from the administration's economic stimulus package, and projections through 2013 show a $3.1 billion reduction in overall funding for the program compared with 2009 projections.

Unveiling NASA's $18.7 billion 2010 budget on Thursday, acting Administrator Chris Scolese said the Obama administration had ordered an independent review of NASA's plans to replace the space shuttle with a combination of manned and unmanned Ares rockets, Apollo-style Orion capsules, and lunar landers needed to establish research stations on the moon by the early 2020s. The new rockets are the central elements of what NASA calls the Constellation program.

"You can expect a new administration coming in wants to understand where we're at, and is this the best way to go forward," Scolese said. "That's the purpose of the review, to understand that. Clearly if we're on the wrong path we should change. If you're asking me, 'Do I think we're on the wrong path,' no, I don't. We need to go off and demonstrate that. The review team needs to look at it and understand what we're doing and offer suggestions on how we could do it better."

A concept image showing NASA's Ares 1 rocket taking off.

(Credit: NASA)

The review is expected to be completed by August. In the meantime, NASA will continue work on the Ares 1 rocket and Orion capsules the agency hopes to begin flying in March 2015. But contracts needed for initial development of the unmanned Ares 5 heavy lift booster needed for NASA's planned return to the moon are on hold pending the results of the review.

NASA's $18.7 billion budget request includes $1 billion in Recovery Act money and funds the addition of one shuttle flight to deliver an already-built physics experiment to the International Space Station.

Including next week's launch of the shuttle Atlantis on a fifth and final mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA plans nine more shuttle flights through September 30, 2010, the end of the fiscal year. If one or two flights slip beyond that target, NASA will need additional funding but the Obama administration has indicated it would support such a request if needed.

"What does this budget represent? I was surprised, in the last month I've seen the president three times," Scolese told reporters Thursday. "And I think that's an indication that NASA is something that this administration really cares about. The fact that we were highlighted in the budget discussions today with the (president's) science adviser is another indication of that. And I think you see it in this first bullet here, a $630 million increase to exploration, a $456 million increase to science and a $264 million increase to aeronautics. Those are significant increases."

Even so, the picture is much less rosy in the out years. Projections through 2013 in the fiscal 2010 budget package feature an asterisk after totals for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate responsible for space station operations and development of the Constellation program.

The asterisks mean those numbers may change based on the results of the upcoming manned spaceflight review. But as of this writing, exploration faces $3.1 billion in cuts through 2013.

"We're up this year and next by about $630 million," agreed Douglas Cooke, associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters. "Over that time period, it's down about $3.1 (billion)."

Former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin said in a recent speech the projected funding shortfalls threaten America's leadership in manned space flight.

"In the last five years two presidents and two Congresses have provided the top-level direction necessary to ensure that the root cause of Columbia's loss--the lack of a guiding strategic vision for NASA--never happens again," Griffin said. "But apparently something more is needed. We're not matching the words with the necessary actions at the staff level. How soon we forget.

"Let me be clear. In a democracy, the proper purpose of the OMB (Office of Management and Budget) is not to find a way to create a Potemkin Village at NASA. It is not to create the appearance of having a real space program without having to pay for it. It is not to specify to NASA how much money shall be allocated for human lunar return by 2020. The proper purpose of the OMB is to work with NASA, as a partner in good government, to craft carefully vetted estimates of what is required to achieve national policy goals. The judgment as to whether the stated goals are too costly, or not, is one to be made by the nation's elected leadership, not career civil service staff."

Griffin said "no one can wrest leadership in space from the United States. We're that good. But we can certainly cede it, and that is the path we are on."

Sen. Bill Nelson, (D-Fla.), said he believes President Obama understands the value of space exploration and "I believe that's why the president has committed to finishing all nine space shuttle missions, regardless of how long it takes; and, to make full use of the International Space Station."

"This is a step in the right direction," he said. "But down the road the administration's budget does not match what candidate Obama said about the future of our space program. Still, he's assured me these numbers are subject to change, pending a review he has ordered of NASA."

A longer version of this story is available on the CBS News Space Place web site.