Sets Timelines For Development Of SLS Components

NASA has released the acquisition overview for the Space Launch System (SLS), its new, advanced, heavy-lift launch vehicle. NASA officials say this new heavy-lift rocket - in combination with the Orion crew capsule already under development, increased support for the commercialization of astronaut travel to low Earth orbit, an extension of activities on the International Space Station until at least 2020, and a fresh focus on new technologies - is key to implementing the plan laid out by President Obama and Congress in the bipartisan 2010 NASA Authorization Act.

The booster will be America's most powerful since the Saturn V rocket that carried Apollo astronauts to the moon and will launch humans to places no one has gone before. The rocket will give the nation a safe, affordable and sustainable means of reaching beyond our current range of space exploration. It will open new discoveries from unique vantage points and destinations far from Earth.

The SLS will carry the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle and its astronaut crew, cargo, equipment and science experiments to an asteroid by the middle of the next decade and then to Mars.

The specific architecture was selected after analysis of the combination of technologies that would effectively meet the SLS capability requirements. The architecture also uses an evolvable development approach. This type of approach allows NASA to address high-cost development activities early on in the program while taking advantage of higher buying power before inflation erodes the available funding in a fixed budget.

Initial planning is for the following:

• Boosters – utilization of the five segment Ares First Stage Boosters under the existing contract for the initial flights, the first of which is targeted for the end of 2017.
• Advanced Boosters – to be utilized for missions beyond the initial flights -The Agency will not specify solutions (i.e. liquid or solid propulsion may be proposed), but will instead solicit solutions to meet performance and interface requirements. -A risk reduction solicitation will be issued later this calendar year to improve the competitiveness of competing propulsion technologies and business cases before work begins on the actual Design, Development, Test and Evaluation (DDT&E) of the final booster configuration. -DDT&E will be solicited in the 2013-2014 timeframe after results are received from the risk reduction effort.
• Stages – utilization of the existing Ares Upper Stage contract for the integrated SLS Core Stage and Upper Stage for the initial SLS capability through 2021.
• Avionics - utilization of the existing Ares Instrument Unit Avionics contract for the initial SLS capability through 2021.
• Engines – for the Core and Upper Stages -Core Stage Engine - utilization of the existing inventory of RS-25Ds for the initial SLS capability. -Upper Stage Engine – utilization of the existing Ares J-2X development contract.
• Spacecraft and Payload Adaptors, and Payload Fairing– initial in-house design efforts followed by competitive acquisitions beginning in the 2013 timeframe.
• Advanced development - a combination of in-house tasks and competitive opportunities for industry and academia beginning in 2012.
• Systems Engineering and Integration – NASA led at least through SLS critical design review (CDR) in 2014.

(Images courtesy NASA)

FMI: www.nasa.gov/exploration