Constellation program

Constellation program, canceled U.S. crewed spaceflight program that was scheduled as a successor to the space shuttle program. Its earliest flights were planned to carry astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) beginning in 2015. However, missions to the Moon by 2020 and to Mars after that were the main focus of Constellation.

In January 2004 U.S. Pres. George W. Bush called upon the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to resume crewed missions to the Moon and then to begin crewed missions to Mars. A key requirement was that this new program be funded by retiring the space shuttle in 2010 after completing the ISS. The new program, called Constellation after the U.S. Navy’s first ship, would have comprised launch vehicles, a crewed spacecraft, and a lunar lander.

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A number of options were considered for the new launchers, including adaptations of the existing Delta IV or Atlas V rockets, before it was decided to exploit space shuttle technology to create two new launch vehicles. In June 2006 NASA named the new launchers Ares, after the Greek counterpart of the Roman god Mars. Ares I was designed to carry the crewed spacecraft, and the larger Ares V was designed to carry heavier cargo like the lunar lander.

In August 2006 the crewed spacecraft, initially dubbed the Crew Exploration Vehicle, was named Orion, after the constellation. Orion would have been 5 metres (16 feet) in diameter and would have had a launch mass of 22,700 kg (50,000 pounds). It would have consisted of a conical crew module and a cylindrical service module and would have been able to spend six months docked to the ISS. The crew module would have had a volume of 20 cubic metres (700 cubic feet), half of it habitable. It was designed to carry a crew of four. (Originally, Orion was designed to carry six people to the ISS and four to the Moon, but, to save money in designing Orion, NASA decided to concentrate initially on the four-person model and leave the six-person Orion as a possibility for later in the Constellation program.) The service module would have housed the main propulsion system, the attitude-control system, and oxygen and water for the crew module. The overall configuration was reminiscent of the Apollo spacecraft, but the service module would have drawn power from deployable solar panels rather than from fuel cells. A prototype Orion was delivered to NASA in late 2007. The first and only test flight of an Ares I launched on October 28, 2009, and the first launch with a crew was initially scheduled to be directed to the ISS in 2015.

In December 2007 NASA named the lunar lander Altair, after the brightest star in the constellation Aquila. Aquila is the Latin word for Eagle, which was also the name of the first crewed spacecraft to land on the Moon, Apollo 11’s lunar module. Altair would have been a two-stage spacecraft (a descent stage and an ascent stage) and would have landed four astronauts on the Moon. Its launch mass would have been 37,800 kg (83,300 pounds).

For a crewed mission to the Moon, an Ares V would have launched first, carrying Altair into Earth’s orbit. An Ares I would have then launched with Orion, which would have docked with Altair’s ascent stage. The second stage of the Ares V would have reignited to send Altair and Orion to the Moon, after which the docked spacecraft would have withdrawn from the spent stage. The service module’s main engine would have slowed Altair and Orion so they could enter lunar orbit. The crew of four would have transferred to Altair and landed on the Moon. On the early missions the surface expedition would have lasted a week. The descent stage of Altair would have served as a launch platform for the ascent stage, which would have rendezvoused in lunar orbit with Orion. The crew would have then transferred to Orion, after which the ascent stage would have been jettisoned. The service module’s main engine would have been used to leave lunar orbit. Just before the spacecraft reentered Earth’s atmosphere, the service module would have been jettisoned. The capsule would have then discarded its basal heat shield and deployed its three parachutes. The normal mode of return would have been on land in the United States, but if necessary the capsule could have splashed down at sea.

In May 2009 the administration of Pres. Barack Obama announced that it would review the Constellation program to determine whether it would be the best option for U.S. crewed spaceflight after the end of the space shuttle program. In October 2009 the review committee announced that, barring a significant increase in NASA’s budget, the schedule for the Constellation program was unrealistic, with the first crewed Ares I flight likely occurring between 2017 and 2019. In February 2010 the Obama administration canceled the Constellation program in favour of commercial flights to the ISS and research on lowering the cost of crewed spaceflight.

However, in April 2010 Obama announced that work would proceed on the Orion capsule but as a vehicle designed solely for astronauts to escape the ISS in an emergency. Orion was incorporated in 2013 into the Asteroid Redirect Mission, in which in the early 2020s a probe would retrieve a boulder from an asteroid’s surface and bring it to lunar orbit, where astronauts on board an Orion spacecraft could study it. Orion had its first flight test on December 5, 2014, in which a capsule launched by a Delta IV Heavy rocket made two orbits. The Asteroid Redirect Mission was canceled in 2017. Orion development nevertheless continued, and that same year Orion became part of Artemis, the crewed lunar exploration program proposed by the Donald Trump administration.