Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) The idea for a Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) was announced on January 14, 2004, as part of the
Vision for Space Exploration after the
Space Shuttle Columbia accident. The CEV effectively replaced the conceptual
Orbital Space Plane (OSP), a proposed replacement for the Space Shuttle. A design competition was held, and the winner was the proposal from a consortium led by Lockheed Martin. It was subsequently named "Orion" in 2006 after the stellar
constellation and
mythical hunter of the same name, and became part of the
Constellation program under NASA administrator
Sean O'Keefe. , NASA planned for the first flight to the International Space Station with astronauts onboard to be no later than 2014. The service module was originally planned to use liquid
methane () as its fuel, but switched to
hypergolic propellants due to the infancy of oxygen/methane-powered rocket technologies and the goal of launching the first uncrewed Orion CEV by 2012. The Orion CEV was to be launched on the
Ares I rocket to low Earth orbit, where it would rendezvous with the
Altair lunar lander launched on a heavy-lift
Ares V launch vehicle for lunar missions.
Environmental testing NASA performed environmental testing of Orion from 2007 to 2011 at the
Glenn Research Center Plum Brook Station in
Sandusky, Ohio. The Center's
Space Power Facility is the world's largest
thermal vacuum chamber.
Launch Abort System (LAS) testing test assembled at the NASA Langley Research Center ATK Aerospace successfully completed the first Orion Launch Abort System (LAS) test on November 20, 2008. The LAS motor could provide of thrust in case an emergency situation should arise on the launch pad or during the first of the rocket's climb to orbit. On March 2, 2009, a full size, full weight command module mockup (pathfinder) began its journey from the Langley Research Center to
White Sands Missile Range in southern
New Mexico for at-gantry launch vehicle assembly training and for LES testing. On May 10, 2010, NASA successfully executed the LES PAD-Abort-1 test at White Sands, launching a boilerplate (mock-up) Orion capsule to an altitude of approximately . The test used three solid-fuel rocket motorsthe main thrust motor, an attitude control motor and the jettison motor.
Splashdown recovery testing In 2009, during the Constellation phase of the program, the Post-landing Orion Recovery Test (PORT) was designed to determine and evaluate methods of crew rescue and what kind of motions the astronaut crew could expect after landing, including conditions outside the capsule for the recovery team. The evaluation process supported NASA's design of landing recovery operations including equipment, ship and crew needs. The PORT Test used a full-scale
boilerplate (mock-up) of NASA's Orion crew module and was tested in water under simulated and real weather conditions. Tests began March 23, 2009, with a Navy-built, boilerplate in a test pool. Full sea testing ran April 6–30, 2009, at various locations off the coast of NASA's Kennedy Space Center with media coverage.
Cancellation of Constellation program On May 7, 2009, the Obama administration enlisted the
Augustine Commission to perform a full independent review of the ongoing NASA space exploration program. The commission found the then-current
Constellation Program to be too under-budgeted with significant cost overruns, behind schedule by four years or more in several essential components, and unlikely to be capable of meeting any of its scheduled goals. As a consequence, the commission recommended a significant re-allocation of goals and resources. As one of the many outcomes based on these recommendations, on October 11, 2010, the Constellation program was canceled, ending development of the Altair, Ares I, and Ares V. The Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle survived the cancellation and was transferred to be launched on the Space Launch System.
Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) The Orion development program was restructured from three different versions of the Orion capsule, each for a different task, to the development of the MPCV as a single version capable of performing multiple tasks.
Orion splashdown recovery testing on top of a
Delta IV Heavy Before EFT-1 in December 2014, several preparatory vehicle recovery tests were performed, which continued the "crawl, walk, run" approach established by PORT. The Stationary Recovery Test (SRT) demonstrated the recovery hardware and techniques that were to be employed for the recovery of the Orion CM in the protected waters of
Naval Station Norfolk using the LPD-17 type
USS Arlington as the recovery ship.
Orion Lite History Orion Lite is an unofficial name used in the media for a lightweight crew capsule proposed by
Bigelow Aerospace in collaboration with Lockheed Martin. It was to be based on the Orion spacecraft that Lockheed Martin was developing for NASA. It was never developed. It was to be a lighter, less capable and a less expensive version of the full Orion. Orion Lite was intended to provide a stripped-down version of the Orion that would be available for missions to the International Space Station earlier than the more capable Orion, which is designed for longer duration missions to the
Moon and
Mars. Bigelow had begun working with Lockheed Martin in 2004. A few years later Bigelow signed a million-dollar contract to develop "an Orion mockup, an Orion Lite", in 2009. The proposed collaboration between Bigelow and Lockheed Martin on the Orion Lite spacecraft has ended. Bigelow began work with
Boeing on a similar capsule, the
CST-100, which has no Orion heritage, and was one of the two systems selected under NASA's
Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program to transport crew to the ISS.
Design Orion Lite's primary mission would be to transport crew to the International Space Station (ISS), or to private space stations such as the planned
B330 from Bigelow Aerospace. While Orion Lite would have the same exterior dimensions as the Orion, there would be no need for the deep space infrastructure present in the Orion configuration. As such, the Orion Lite would have been able to support larger crews of around 7 people as the result of greater habitable interior volume and the reduced weight of equipment needed to support an exclusively low-Earth-orbit configuration.
Recovery In order to reduce the weight of Orion Lite, the more durable heat shield of the Orion would be replaced with a lighter weight heat shield designed to support the lower temperatures of Earth atmospheric re-entry from low Earth orbit. Additionally, the current proposal calls for a
mid-air retrieval, wherein another aircraft captures the descending Orion Lite module. To date, such a retrieval method has not been employed for crewed spacecraft, although it
has been used with satellites. ==Flights==