NASA is scheduled to announce this afternoon which company will build the next-generation space vehicle expected to take U.S. astronauts back to the moon.
Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin and a team composed of Northrop Grumman and Boeing are competing for the contract, which experts believe could initially be worth as much as $10 billion.
The contract is expected to be the largest contract awarded by NASA in decades,and the company chosen will likely dominate the human space exploration business for decades to come.
“This is going to be the capsule that is the core of the human space craft system,” NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries said.
The space capsule is known as Orion and expected to replace the space shuttle, which will be retired in 2010. The Orion — which is set to be operational no later than 2014 — is part of an ambitious $104 billion multiyear White House plan announced in 2005 known as Constellation to put men back on the moon by 2020 and after that, on Mars.
Experts closely following the program would not speculate as to who would win the contract.
“I’m really sort of in the dark as to who will win,” said Keith Cowing, a NASA watchdog and editor of NASAwatch.com. “There’s more mystery in this thing than normally is the case.”
Cowing said he was concerned NASA was not ready to undertake a project costing more than $100 billion.
“You do this type of thing when Congress is out of town,” he said. “There will be some complaints in Congress. There are a lot of people saying this isn’t the vision we signed up for.”
Indeed, the Government Accountability Office, in a report requested by House Science Committee Chair Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., suggested last month that NASA is not commit itself to any long-term financial obligation for construction of the Orion before determining if the project is “affordable and executable.”
George Washington University professor John Logsdon said the importance of the United States having a working shuttle by 2014 outweighs GAO’s concerns, but the agency needs to make quick progress.
“I think there are probably some legitimate criticisms that NASA certainly will have to take into account as they go before Congress and defend the budget for this program,” he said.
