Golden Spike taps Northrup Grumman to design manned lunar lander

The Altair lunar lander, shelved by Congress together with most components of the late Constellation program, in one of many manned and unmanned configurations [NASA/Frassinito & Associates].

Ben Evans
AmericaSpace

Officially revealed to the world barely a month ago, the Golden Spike Company last week announced a contract with aerospace giant Northrop Grumman to begin design work on a lunar landing vehicle which could see astronauts back on the surface of the Moon by 2020. Although Golden Spike—founded by Alan Stern, Associate Administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in 2007–2008 and Principal Investigator for the New Horizons mission to Pluto, and including former Apollo Flight Director Gerry Griffin as Chair of the Board—remains in what it calls “Phase A” of its forward path, the contract with the only company to have a proven track record of building human-rated lunar landers is a significant advance and brings the goal of bootprints on the Moon closer.

Read the full article HERE.

Forever Young, Memoir of the Astronaut's Astronaut

Charlie Duke catches Apollo 16 commander John Young as he salutes Old Glory in mid-jump, demonstrating the Moon's low gravity. See the original at NASA's Apollo Lunar Surface Journal, HERE (MET: 120:25:42 - AS17-113-18339).

"He is off the ground about 1.45 seconds which, in the lunar gravity field, means he launched himself at a velocity of about 1.17 meters per second and reached a maximum height of 0.42 meters. Although the suit and backpack weighed as much as he did his total weight was only about 65 pounds (30 kg). To get to this height he only had to bend his knees slightly and push up with his legs." Video Clip ( 3 min 21 sec 0.9 Mb RealVideo or 30 Mb MPEG ) [NASA].

Ben Evans
AmericaSpace

In the days before his first mission into space, way back in March 1965, John Young was asked by a journalist if he minded flying into orbit with the fiery Virgil ‘Gus’ Grissom as his Gemini 3 crewmate. Without blinking, the 34-year-old Young replied: “Are you kidding? I’d go with my mother-in-law!” It was an indicator not only of Young’s intense dry wit, but of his equally intense devotion to the exploration of the final frontier – an exploration which consumes 400 pages in his long-awaited memoir, Forever Young, co-authored with Auburn University history professor and Neil Armstrong biographer James R. Hansen.

Long-awaited because Young has earned himself a reputation over the past five decades which cannot be surpassed. True, there are astronauts who have flown more times into space than him. True, there are other astronauts who have walked on the Moon, besides him. True, there are astronauts who have commanded more missions and flown longer in space than him. But for sheer longevity within the astronaut business, John Watts Young is unrivaled. Selected as a member of NASA’s second intake of spacefarers in September 1962 – an intake which former chief astronaut Deke Slayton once described as “probably the best all-around group ever put together” – he spent more than 40 years with NASA and flew six times, across three separate programs: Gemini, Apollo and the Shuttle. Even Jerry Ross, who became the first human to record a seventh voyage into space, has described Young as his hero.

Read the full review at AmericaSpace, HERE.

September 2014 EFT-1 after 2-chute Orion test

Artist’s illustration of the EFT-1 Orion in orbit, following a planned launch atop a Delta-IV Heavy booster in September 2014 [NASA].

Ben Evans

AmericaSpace

In less than two years’ time, NASA intends to loft its first unmanned Orion spacecraft on the long-awaited Exploration Flight Test (EFT)-1 mission atop United Launch Alliance’s gigantic Delta IV Heavy booster. The mission, which will rise to a maximum altitude of 3,600 miles—the highest a human-capable vehicle has flown since the end of the Apollo era—will serve to wring out many of Orion’s systems in readiness for its first Exploration Mission in late 2017. NASA took one step toward the EFT-1 goal yesterday (Thursday), by completing the latest in a series of parachute drop tests of a mock-up vehicle at the US Army’s Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona. The test confirmed that Orion could land safely even if one of its two parachutes failed to open during the critical final stages of descent.

Read the full article, HERE.

Checking in on the SLS (July 11, 2012)
Orion Drop Test (April 18. 2012)
EFT-1 2017 SLS/Orion lunar mission outlined (March 1, 2012)
Orion EFT1 Animation (No Narration)
Spudis: Double the Space Budget? (March 1, 2012)
NASA settles on SLS architecture (September 14, 2011)