Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, United Launch Alliance to design and develop Emergency Detection System for human spaceflight missions

Posted by Courtney Howard

CANOGA PARK, Calif., 10 May 2010. Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne won a $1.8 million contract from United Launch Alliance to help design and develop an Emergency Detection System (EDS) for human spaceflights to be proposed for Atlas V and Delta IV launch vehicles. The EDS is part of NASA's Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program, which aims to stimulate efforts within the private sector to develop, demonstrate, and accelerate human spaceflight capabilities.

"Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne is honored to support United Launch Alliance and NASA in the new initiative that focuses on commercial access to space," says Tim Leonard, CCDev program manager, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne. "We are confident our technologies will help NASA achieve its goal for this important endeavor because Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne has a track record of 100 percent mission success in human spaceflights."

The EDS will be designed to monitor critical launch vehicle and spaceflight systems, as well as to issue status, warning, and abort information to the crew during their mission to low-Earth orbit. It is also being designed to trigger the Launch Abort System during an emergency to carry astronauts to safety. The contract runs until December 2010.

Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne is a United Technologies Corp. company.