Wednesday, leaders of the Stennis Space Center announced a new commercial partnership. Orbital Sciences Corporation, headquartered in Virginia, and Aerojet, headquartered in California, will test their AJ-26 rocket engine at Stennis.
"This is the type of commercial venture we believe the president had in mind with the budget rollout," Stennis Director Gene Goldman said at a press conference Wednesday.
Orbital recently landed a $2 billion federal contract to resupply the International Space Station. It's one of the first major commercial contracts in the changing culture of NASA.
Stennis leaders expected to be doing testing now for the J2X engine, but that program was put on hold as NASA took a new director under President Obama.
Orbital's president told Eyewitness News Wednesday, he believes commercial partnerships are good for the space program.
"Commercial companies can do it more efficiently because that's what they have to do or they go out of business," AJ Thompson said.
The changes in the space program won't effect Stennis until the 2011 budget. That gives Stennis leaders a year to form enough commercial partnerships to maintain current employment levels. The Orbital/Aerojet partnership would allow Stennis to keep roughly half its current jobs, according to Stennis Director Gene Goldman, but Goldman added, more commercial partnership opportunities will be out there in the coming year.
"Stennis as a center is in pretty good shape, since we do propulsion testing, to keep our workforce fairly stable," Goldman said. "We're not sure yet what the workforce projections will be, all of that is still in work, but we feel like we're in a pretty good position."
Thompson added: "I think Stennis is the premiere test facility, not just here in the country, but in the world."
The AJ-26 is a 50-year-old Russian engine. Stennis engineers expect to begin testing the AJ-26 on the modified E-1 Test Stand sometime this summer.
