NASA on Tuesday said it has chosen Boeing to design and build the upper stage of the Ares 1 rocket, which will launch astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) and eventually send humans back to the moon.
The 514.7 million U.S. dollar cost-plus-award fee contract runs through 2016 and covers the manufacture of a ground test article, three flight test units and six production flight units. The Ares I upper stage will boost NASA's planned shuttle successor, the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, into orbit.
In winning the first major piece of the new launch system, the Boeing-led team beat out Alliant Techsystems, the Edina, Minn. firm that nabbed an 1.8 billion dollar contract to work on the lower, or first stage, of the Ares 1 rocket earlier this month.
Boeing's subcontractors include Summa Technology Inc., Hamilton Sundstrand, Moog Inc., Northrop Grumman, Orion Propulsion, United Launch Alliance, and United Space Alliance
The Ares 1 rocket.
This is the fourth of the giant contracts handed out by the space agency in its multibillion-dollar plan to return astronauts to the moon by the end of the next decade. NASA has already promised up to 10.5 billion dollars in work to aerospace companies. A fifth large contract, for shuttle electronics, will be awarded in December.
Ares I is a two-stage rocket that will carry to low Earth orbit the crew exploration vehicle Orion, which will succeed the space shuttle as NASA's primary vehicle for human exploration in space.
NASA expects to conduct its first orbital flight test of the Ares I rocket in 2013 and start using the vehicle to transport astronauts to the International Space Station no later than March 2015. The finished rocket is expected to lift 55,000 pounds (25,000 kilograms) to low Earth orbit.
Source:Xinhua/agencies
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