ATK, USA announce contract terms

NASA contractors Alliant Techsystems Inc. and United Space Alliance this week announced the terms of a contract that affects hundreds of jobs at Kennedy Space Center.

The $257 million deal formalizes an agreement announced last fall, which said that about 550 USA workers would continue to work part time on NASA’s next-generation moon rocket and a test flight planned this summer.

That's the equivalent of 180 full time employees.

Alliant Techsystems, or ATK, is the prime contractor for the first stage of the Ares I rocket, a five-segment solid rocket booster based on the company's four-segment shuttle boosters.

The deal extends through 2014, the year before the first manned flights of the Ares I and Orion crew capsule are planned.

An ATK spokesman said the contract took effect in January.

This week, a train carrying the last hardware needed for the first test flight arrived at KSC. The flight is tentatively scheduled for July 11.

USA sued ATK last year before the new agreement was reached, saying ATK was poaching its engineers and not negotiating the deal in good faith.

The companies said the lawsuit had been resolved.

NASA has projected that KSC's workforce of nearly 15,000 could shrink by 3,500 jobs after the shuttle is retired at the end of next year.

IMAGE NOTE: NASA's Constellation Program is getting to work on the new spacecraft that will return humans to the moon and blaze a trail to Mars and beyond. This artist's rendering represents a concept of the Ares I crew launch vehicle liftoff. The launch system that will take the crew to space builds on powerful, reliable shuttle and Apollo-era propulsion elements. Astronauts will launch on a rocket made up of a shuttle-derived solid rocket booster, with a second stage powered by a J2X engine.