NASA Awards Two CEV Contracts

Lockheed Martin and a team of Boeing and Northrop Grumman each receive $28 million USD contracts to develop designs for the Crew Exploration Vehicle.

The contracts will cover an eight-month period, and the competing contractors will have to demonstrate they can manage costs, risks, and scheduling as they work to deliver prototype designs.

NASA plans to select one of the two teams in early 2006 to build the CEV. The space agency has moved up its previously announced selection date of 2008 in order to avoid a lengthy gap between the retirement of the space shuttle and the deployment of the CEV.

Several Senators agreed with new NASA Administrator Michael Griffin that national security and other interests would not benefit from a five or six year span with no US manned space flights.

The CEV is expected to carry up to six astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit soon after the Space Shuttle is retired in 2010, and then on to the moon as early as 2015.

President George W. Bush has laid out his administration’s vision for NASA, including completion of work on the International Space Station by 2010, and sending a robotic mission to the moon as a precursor to manned expeditions.

“With the experience and knowledge gained on the moon,” he said, “we will then be ready to take the next steps of space exploration: human missions to Mars and to worlds beyond.”

David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.