WASHINGTON — Money problems will probably force NASA to abandon its ambitious internal goal of having a new moon spaceship ready by 2013, a top space agency official said Wednesday.
The agency should still be able to meet its public commitment to test launch astronauts in the first Orion capsule by March 2015, the official said, unless national budget stalemates continue.
But the agency’s own hurry-up plan to get the job done even earlier — with a first crew launch by 2013 — will “very likely” be changed during meetings this week in Houston, said Doug Cooke, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for exploration.
“We’re probably going to have to move our target date,” Cooke said in a phone interview.
Jefferson County-based Lockheed Martin Space Systems is developing Orion under a contract it won in 2006.
An actual astronaut moon landing is still set for 2020. Orion initially will just orbit Earth before attempting a more complicated moon launch that also will involve unmanned rockets.
Cooke acknowledged the slipped launch target date during an interview about an internal NASA report leaked to the website Nasa Watch. The document shows that the space agency’s overall moon plan has encountered financial and technical problems, which NASA says it can overcome.
The leaked report reflects typical problems of a program this early in the running, Cooke said.
“What you’re seeing is sausage-making,” he said. “I’m really satisfied with the work that’s getting done.”
The 117-page report, posted Wednesday at , shows an $80 million cost overrun this year for just one motor and a dozen technical problems.
W. Henry Lambright, a technology and public-policy professor at Syracuse University blamed the political system for failing to create budgets that are passed and signed by the president so that NASA could proceed. The budget for next year still has not been passed.
