NASA Begins Commercial Partnership With Alliant Techsystems
NASA NEWS RELEASE Posted: September 13, 2011
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA and Alliant Techsystems (ATK) of Salt
Lake City have agreed to collaborate on the development of the
company's Liberty Launch System as part of the agency's Commercial
Crew Development Round 2 activities.
Artist's concept of ATK's Liberty rocket rolling to the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center. Credit: ATK
The unfunded Space Act Agreement (SAA) through NASA's Commercial Crew
Program will allow the agency and ATK to review and discuss Liberty
system requirements; safety and certification plans; computational
models of rocket stage performance; and avionics architecture
designs. The agreement outlines key milestones including an Initial
System Design review, during which ATK will present to NASA officials
the Liberty systems level requirements, preliminary design, and
certification process development.
"This agreement will provide the opportunity to look at the Liberty
system to understand its design solution and risks, its capabilities
and how it could be used to fly our NASA crew," said Ed Mango, NASA's
Commercial Crew Program manager. The program is based at the agency's
Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA will provide feedback to ATK based on its human spaceflight
experience for advancing crew transportation system capabilities and
the agency's draft human certification requirements.
"With this SAA we believe NASA will benefit from gaining insight into
the various systems we are developing, and we can benefit from the
feedback," said Kent Rominger, vice president, strategy and business
development for ATK Aerospace. "In the end, we hope to offer a
commercial solution to NASA, the Department of Defense, and other
commercial human spaceflight programs."
For information about NASA's Commercial Crew Program, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/commercial
|