The Norm  Augustine led U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee heard from Doug Cooke and Jeff Hanley  yesterday during the panel's first public meeting held at the Carnegie Institute in Washington. 

The full presentation, which includes a comprehensive status report on Constellation can be found at:

http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/library/hsfr_exploration.html

Jeff Hanley briefed that NASA is on track to maintain the March 2015 goal for the first crewed Orion/Ares flight to the International Space Station.  He emphasized how Constellation is making use of existing NASA and contractor facilities and capabilities but in a leaner, smaller more sustainable manner to not just provide crew transport to space station, but to develop future human spaceflight systems that move beyond low Earth orbit, to the moon and beyond.  

Technical progress to date is impressive.  Scan through the Augustine panel briefing charts and you can see the labor of over 10,000 civil servant and contractor employees hard at work designing, building and testing hardware.   Click and scan through an interactive tool posted to the Constellation website this week and you can see the Ares and Ares I-X, Orion, Altair vehicle designs come to life, linking design drawings to video footage of actual hardware and tests.

http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/constellation_projects/