NASA Official: Stennis Vital Link to U.S. Space Missions

BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. – NASA facilities here and in New Orleans are in no danger of closing because both will be needed if the space agency pursues missions to the moon and Mars, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said Thursday.

Griffin said Stennis Space Center near the Mississippi coast is part of NASA’s long-range plans because Stennis is the only place in the United States to test large rocket engines and groups of rocket engines.

Getting to the moon with a significant payload will require rockets that can lift 100 or more metric tons, he said.

“It all has to do with this thing called gravity,” Stennis Space Center director Rear Adm. Thomas Donaldson said. “It’s going to take large engines and large rockets to escape the Earth’s atmosphere.”

Griffin said he wants the United States to be the leader in space exploration.

“The human race will expand the range of its habitat, we will expand that habitat into the solar system and beyond one day,” Griffin said.

The Michoud facility in New Orleans will be needed to continue building rocket engines and Stennis will be needed to test them, Griffin said, recognizing that 2008 is the target date for ending production of shuttle main fuel tank.

“We can’t send people home and then several years later try to restart the facility,” Griffin said.

The NASA administrator said he doesn’t see his agency designing and building a new rocket or space vehicle from scratch to replace the shuttle, but does see it designing a new upper stage for existing rockets to replace the aging shuttle fleet. The new designs will include a vehicle to go to the moon.

“The best I know today, there’s no plan that doesn’t require the development of a new upper stage,” he said.

Griffin said he won’t know if the July 13 launch date for the shuttle Discovery is possible until the shuttle lifts off the pad. He said several factors related to the fuel tanks had delayed a May launch date.