LIVE: ESA and NASA Announcement on Orion SM - Jan 16, 2013

[Chris Bergin]

NASA and ESA will brief media at 17:30 CET (11:30am Eastern) on Wednesday, 16 January, on the details for ESA to provide the Service Module for the first Orion spacecraft mission in 2017.

Briefing participants include: William H. Gerstenmaier, NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations, Thomas Reiter, ESA Director of Human Spaceflight and Operations, Mark Geyer, NASA Orion Program Manager, and Bernardo Patti, ESA Manager of International Space Station Operations.

Resources:

Live Coverage: NTV or - http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/Watch_live_ESA_NASA_media_briefing_16_January

NSF Orion articles (lots and lots):
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/tag/orion/

L2 Orion Section (huge):
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=tags&tags=Orion

[Chris Bergin]

Here we go:

[Chris Bergin]

[Chris Bergin]

Gerst outlining....

Confirms ESA will develop the SM for Orion.

"Pretty amazing activity. A lot of engineering behind the scenes on integration/technical interfaces."

Everyone met today, NASA, ESA, LM, Contractors....

"This is part of ISS. Some of the funding is coming from the Station partnership. The experience from the ISS helped with the technical problems and gaining the trust".

"ISS is the first step for exploration, but it helped on the cooperation."

[Chris Bergin]

Thomas - top man.

"This is remarkable. We're opening a new page in trans-Atlantic cooperation for building space transportation for BEO."

"LEO will remain a destination for us, to the end and beyond this decade. But the goal is to go BEO."

"We're building on ATV. The fourth will be launched in April. The last next year.

"ESA has been working since 2008 on the technical side to prepare the work for the decision at the recent conference.

"It was endorsed by the US State Dept, EU and now we can go ahead. "

[Chris Bergin]

Mark Geyer - with slides.

[Chris Bergin]

Grey remains with NASA. Rest is ESA.

[Chris Bergin]

EM-1 will debut the combined hardware. EFT-1 is all NASA.

Working towards a PDR stage.

EFT-1 is flying in 20 months.

[Chris Bergin]

Bernardo:

Now placing industrial contracts. The schedule is very challenging, but exciting.

Making good progress to PDR.

[Lars_J]

Have they mentioned when EM-1 is scheduled?

[Chris Bergin]

Hi res slides going to nasa.gov if someone can look out for them.

Question time already - notes of interest:

Gerst: We were pretty smart about the interfaces on the primary load path. The contractors helped with those interfaces. Experience from ISS helped the cooperation.

This is the first step for international BEO exploration.

Thomas: I want to stress exploration will becoming more and more an international endeavour. ESA has proven to be a reliable partner. This is a good way to exploit synergies to reach common objectives.

[Chris Bergin]

Gerst said he wasn't 100 percent comfortable for some reason. Question asked about that.

Gerst: They are my words. In our world we're really pushing challenges. If I told you I was comfortable with the entire path to Mars people would say I was foolish. We need to evaluate that everything is there, with a very tight schedule. PDR late this year is really fast for development. All that works, but I'm a realist that I know this won't be easy.

[Lars_J]

Gerst is stepping carefully around a Q about his confidence in this ESA collaboration for Orion. A very odd answer.

[Chris Bergin]

Have they mentioned when EM-1 is scheduled?

Dec, 2017 as it always has been (Not that it means it WILL launch then)

[Chris Bergin]

On multiple destinations - Gerst: "You don't design a car that can just go to the grocery store."

The team understand the requirements.

Mark Geyer adds about the flexibility. Notes EM-1 and EM-2, but admits they are still talking about the exploration roadmap.

[Robotbeat]

Not terribly happy about this, personally. But oh well. Still will be cool, and should force the project to continue.

[Chris Bergin]

Visual note that the arrays will be like ATV, as we know - but important to note. Not shown in this graphic.

[yg1968]

Visual note that the arrays will be like ATV, as we know - but important to note. Not shown in this graphic.

The solar arrays will look like ATV but not actually done by ESA, right?

[Chris Bergin]

More notes that they really are only concentrating on EM-1 and EM-2 - with spares for EM-2.

No agreement with ESA with missions past EM-2.

[ThereIWas3]

Considering that NASA backed out of its commitment to partner with ESA in Mars exploration, this is probably a sensitive topic.

Gerst is stepping carefully around a Q about his confidence in this ESA collaboration for Orion. A very odd answer.