Orion Spacecraft is one Weld Closer to it's Next Mission

NASA is one step closer to sending astronauts to Mars. Engineers at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans welded together the first two segments of the Orion crew module that will fly atop NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on a mission beyond the far side of the moon.

The primary structure of Orion’s crew module is made of seven large aluminum pieces that must be precisely welded together.  The first weld connects the tunnel to the forward bulkhead, which is at the top of the spacecraft and houses many of Orion’s critical systems, such as the parachutes that deploy during reentry. Orion’s tunnel, with a docking hatch, will allow crews to move between the crew module and other spacecraft. 

During the coming months as other pieces of Orion’s primary structure arrive at Michoud from machine houses across the country, engineers will inspect and evaluate them to ensure they meet precise design requirements before welding. Once complete, the structure will be shipped to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida where it will be assembled with the other elements of the spacecraft.

Read the complete article HERE

Orion Closer to December Test Flight

In a recent NASA notice, the space agency reported that Orion was moved out of the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

NASA also noted that the Delta IV Heavy rocket, built by United Launch Alliance, made its move Tuesday night, to nearby Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. It was raised Wednesday from the horizontal position into its vertical launch configuration.

Orion now awaits the installation of  the launch abort system.


Once the launch abort system is stacked on the  crew and service modules,  the Orion spacecraft will be considered complete. It then will wait inside the launch abort system facility until mid-November, when the Delta IV Heavy rocket is ready for integration with the spacecraft.
 
NASA has already tested, processed and attached to each other the three Common Booster Cores of the Delta 4 Heavy,  to form the first stage that will connect to Orion’s service module.

Orion is capable of  providing living quarters for up to 21 days.   An additional habitat module will be made available for longer missions.  This will  provide extra space for crew and equipment.

Read the complete NASA release HERE

Testing Orion's Parachutes

 

NASA's Orion crew module  is said to be "the safest spacecraft ever built to carry humans",

One of the most critical components on the Orion is the parachute system.  The team responsible for  Orion's parachute have demonstrated every type of failure they could imagine. But recently they began tests that center on failures that did not involve the parachutes but the launch system during the early stages of a mission - failure on the pad or sub-orbital, they tested how the parachutes would perform.

  Its called the Launch Abort System.  (from the article on Science Daily)

•  In an emergency on the launch pad or during the early stages of ascent, it can activate in milliseconds to pull the crew to safety. Once it has pulled the crew away from the emergency, it's up to the parachutes to bring them down for a safe landing..


• To simulate those conditions, a test version of Orion was dropped from a C-17 at 13,000 feet above the U.S. Army's Yuma Proving Ground, with the main parachutes deploying soon after leaving the plane, before the capsule had a chance to straighten out. All the elements worked together and the parachutes reached a fully open state setting up a soft landing as expected. But the real value of the test will come with the data the engineers were able to gather from it. 

Orion's first mission will be four hours long and unmanned.   The capsule will be launched 3600 miles into space and make two orbits of Earth   and re-enter the atmosphere at 20,000 mph and temperatures nearing 4000 degrees Fahrenheit .

Again, from the Science Daily blog:

• (This first flight will be) to test several of its most critical systems, including its parachutes.

Orion scheduled for 2014

From NASA via DVICE.COM comes word that the Orion crew capsule is indeed scheduled for a 2014 flight! Now before you start dancin a jig, let's qualify this first mission:

• The plan is to send the capsule through two orbits, ending up farther from Earth than any craft intended for human transport has been since 1973. Then, Orion will return for a splashdown in the Pacific.

Now this does sound a bit anticlimactic, like the article stated, it is further than anyone has gone for a very very long time. Far enough to start thinking....are these guys crazy? None of the tech looks any more advanced than 60s era Apollo and the are flying it into deep-space and then come back at 20k mph to splash down in the Pacific ocean? Let me show you why that makes me nervous.....

Now granted, this was test one and it looked too high, too fast and the angle of attack much to high....still....ugly AND scarey! If you go a bit further, test 2's results are much easier to watch!

Everything Old Is New Again....Part 2

Tim Sayell just send me a note concerning NASA's newest mission post. Or is it an new old mission? hummm. This is what is going on. Since the White House put the breaks to a return to the moon NASA has been looking for a way to put the Orion project to good use. As you might recall, Orion was part of the Constellation program that was suppose to return men to the moon by 2020. Instead NASA was tasked with sending people to an asteroid by 2025, and then on to Mars missions by the 2030s. To do this NASA plans to modify the Orion capsule with help from the Orion's main contractor - Lockheed Martin. The new capsule will be designated the MPCV or Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle.

The design is very Apollo Command Vehicle in design but will carry 4 crew members for up to three week. From the article:

• The MPCV will be capable of performing a variety of in-space activities, such as rendezvousing and docking with other craft. And astronauts aboard the MPCV will be able to perform spacewalks

Complete article here

Lockheed Martin's A New Era of Space Exploration

From Lockheed Martin is this promo film of their view of how the Orion system will be utilized to get us to some pretty exciting places like Lagrange points, asteroids and ultimately Mars. It's self serving, no doubt, however it is a good look at how the main player in the system see's it working as a unit. The film is called A New Era of Space Exploration, which is damn pretentious but a whole lot of fun to watch. Check out this YouTube video

First look at L-M's Orion capsule

Here is a sneak peek of Lockheed Martin's Orion capsule. You may be wondering, WTF! they cut the funding for a moon return so why is this still being built. Well, according to Dvice blog - it's good for lots of other stuff, (like) ISS transport flights. You can plainly see the Apollo influence here. It sure does look like a Control Module on steroids don't it? But the thing to remember is that this thing can crew twice the capacity of an Apollo's 3. A couple of things that Dvice mentions that are a vast improvement over the Apollo craft is: (1) it's got a glass cockpit based on the one in the Boeing 787, and (2) "improved waste-management facilities" Now if that isn't a sign of an aging space effort when your biggest concerns are glasses and taking a dump....sigh....

Read more here in the Dvice article

COMMENT: Obama considering canceling Aries & scaling back Orion?

According to a recent gizmodo article: President elect Obama has sent a very detailed questionnaire focusing on the feasibility of the Aries / Orion space craft. The questionnaire goes as far as asking if NASA could redesign the Orion spacecraft so it could be launched by the European Ariane 5 or the Japanese H2A:

• Estimate the feasibility of designing a resized Orion capsule that could be launched by international launch vehicles such as the [European] Ariane 5 or the [Japanese] H2A.

Now I know some of my comments in the past have been critical of what seem to me to be grave errors in design and engineering. That's because some of the craft design papers show little innovation and an over reliance on what would appear to be 40 year old Apollo tech while throwing out probably the greatest achievements in heavy lift rockets while patching flaws in the present designs with for all intents springs and rubber bands.

I know the president elect is asking the same questions we all are, however I really have to stop at having our space efforts handled by the third party is ludicrous and extremely short sighted. Redesign if we must but keep the US space effort, like any ther countries efforts, in our own hands.

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NASA awards contract for new suits!

NASA has awarded a contract to Oceaneering International Inc. of Houston, for the design, development and production of a new spacesuit system. The Constellation Program mission requires two spacesuit system configurations to meet the requirements of Orion missions to the space station and to the moon. Configuration One will support dynamic events such as launch and landing operations; contingency intravehicular activity (IVA) during critical mission events; off-nominal events such as loss of pressurization of the Orion crew compartment; and microgravity. Configuration Two will build upon Configuration One and will support lunar surface operations. While preparing to walk on the moon, the astronauts will construct Configuration Two by replacing elements of Configuration One with elements specialized for surface operations.



Image Credits: NASA.