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Meeting	ACGS Committee Meeting 99 - Boulder - March 2007
Agenda Location	7 SUBCOMMITTEE B – MISSILES AND SPACE 7.1 Crew Exploration Vehicle
Title	Crew Exploration Vehicle
Presenter	Harvey Mamich
Affiliation	Lockheed Martin
Available Downloads*	none
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Abstract	NASA's Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle promises to be one of the most challenging and complex aerospace vehicles built in decades. Orion's GNC systems must safely ferry astronauts and cargo in four very distinct mission phases/vehicle configurations: 1) launch abort during ascent, 2) automatic and piloted rendezvous and docking with multiple vehicles in LEO, 3) missions to the moon and eventually Mars, 4) Skip reentry in a low L/D capsule finishing with a parachute landing. Lockheed Martin, as the prime contractor, must draw on all of its GNC expertise to meet these challenges in NASA's human-rated and cost-adverse environment. The current Orion GNC baseline has a diverse set of two fault tolerant sensors, algorithms and actuators. These include laser-based & RF rendezvous sensors, GPS, star trackers, image processing algorithms, trans-lunar & trans-earth guidance, fly-by-wire controls, remote piloting, onboard mission planning, antenna pointing, gimbaled main engines and a backup lunar return capability using low thrust RCS. One of the more fascinating capabilities entails integrating Apollo era optical navigation techniques into this 21st century vehicle to provide an autonomous any-time return to earth capability. Technology has certainly progressed over the last 40 years but the shear brilliance and ingenuity of the Apollo engineers is being demonstrated over and over as we retrace their steps. This presentation will start with an overview of Project Orion, followed by a summary of GNC highlights and will finish with a description of planned optical navigation capabilities for lunar and cislunar mission phases.