24.05.2019
NASA Invites Media to Orion Abort Test Before Moon Missions with Crew
Media accreditation is open for an uncrewed flight test of the launch abort system of NASA’s Orion spacecraft on Tuesday, July 2. This test, Ascent Abort-2, will demonstrate the abort system can activate, steer the spacecraft, and carry astronauts to a safe distance if an emergency arises during Orion’s climb to orbit.
A 22,000-pound test version of the Orion spacecraft is scheduled to launch from Space Launch Complex 46 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) in Florida on a rocket provided by Northrop Grumman.
Media prelaunch and launch activities will take place at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. International media must apply by 4 p.m. EDT, Monday, May 27, for access to Kennedy and CCAFS. U.S. media must apply by 9 p.m. Friday, June 14. All accreditation requests should be submitted online at:
For questions about accreditation, please email ksc-media-accreditat@mail.nasa.gov. For more information, contact Kennedy’s newsroom at 321-867-2468.
During the three-minute test, the spacecraft, with a fully functional launch abort system, will climb to an altitude of about six miles, traveling at more than 1,000 miles per hour. At that point, the system’s powerful abort motor will fire, pulling Orion away from the booster.
Designing a system for human spaceflight means ensuring there are features in place that protect the astronauts aboard. Data gathered from this test will be used to validate and improve computer models of the spacecraft launch abort system’s performance and functions.
NASA is working to land the first woman and next man on the Moon by 2024. Orion is part of NASA’s backbone for deep space exploration, along with the Space Launch System rocket and Gateway in orbit around the Moon. Orion will sustain astronauts in deep space, provide emergency abort capability, and support a safe re-entry from lunar return velocities. Exploring the Moon helps create a vibrant future and advance technologies, capabilities and new opportunities for future missions to Mars.
Quelle: NASA
----
Update: 26.05.2019
.
NASA Orion AA-2 vehicle at the launch pad for July test
All the elements of the NASA flight test vehicle for the Orion program’s Ascent Abort-2 (AA-2) test in early July are now at Launch Complex 46. The test booster was stacked on the launch pad in April and overnight May 22 into May 23, the test article was rolled from a Kennedy Space Center (KSC) integration facility to the Cape Canaveral launch pad, where the Launch Abort System (LAS) test is set to begin.
AA-2 is a test of Orion’s LAS, and the production version used in the test is planned to fly with spaceflight hardware beginning on Exploration Mission-2 (EM-2), the first planned crewed mission now called Artemis 2.
Other versions of the LAS that have flown or will fly on launches of uncrewed Orion vehicles only have one of the three solid rocket motors active to allow the weight of the system to be jettisoned during ascent to improve launch vehicle performance.
This will be the second and final planned LAS test following the Pad Abort-1 (PA-1) development test conducted in 2010 as a part of the ccanceled Constellation Program and the abort system design changed from PA-1 to AA-2 both inside and outside.
Test article joins booster at launch complex
The flight test article (FTA) was slowly moved on a transporter from the Launch Abort System Facility (LASF) at KSC to Launch Complex 46 (LC-46) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS), reaching the launch complex early in the morning of May 23 in preparation for a scheduled daybreak test on July 2. The FTA consists of an Orion Crew Module (CM) test articleattached to a Separation Ring below, with the production LAS attached structurally to the top of the CM.
The LAS also includes an aerodynamic fairing that encloses the CM. To reduce overall costs, test-specific hardware was built rather than using or manufacturing a full, lunar Crew Module flight article. Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor for the LAS and for the overall Orion system.
Since the test is demonstrating the performance of the LAS, recovery of almost all the hardware is not a requirement; the output of the test is data. “We have DFI (Development Flight Instrumentation) sensors up and down the Launch Abort System stack, all kind of pressure sensors, sound sensors,” Mark Kirasich, NASA Orion Program Manager, said in an interview last week.
Data will be transmitted from the test article in real-time for ground stations to record, but will primarily be recorded onto a dozen storage devices that will be jettisoned from the Crew Module simulator in-flight following the conclusion of the test. The test is essentially over when the LAS separates from the Crew Module; the onboard data recorders will be ejected from the Crew Module simulator in pairs prior to impact after free fall into the Atlantic Ocean.
The FTA will now be attached to the top of the Abort Test Booster (ATB), which was assembled on the launch pad at LC-46 in April. “The motor was moved out there, the aeroshell moved out there and put on top, there’s closeouts you know to kind of seal it at the bottom and the top they’re all installed, so it is essentially ready and waiting for us,” Kirasich said.
“The SR-118 went to the pad first, it was stacked and then we brought the TRS (Thrust Reaction Structure) and the GCA (Guidance Control Assembly) as one assembly and it was stacked on top of the motor,” Joe Voor, NASA Operations Integration Lead for the Orion Flight Test Management Office, explained during the interview. “It actually rests on top of the motor, all the thrust reaction is done through the motor body itself and then the aeroshell was brought out and set over top of that whole assembly.”
“It sits on top of the Thrust Reaction Structure and so that force is reacted through the motor as well and all the ballast plates are stacked on top of the aeroshell.”
The SR-118 is a Northrop Grumman solid rocket motor that is the booster for the test. Its original purpose was as the first stage of the Peacekeeper Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). The Peacekeeper program was deactivated in 2002 and today the motors in the inventory are used for commercial purposes such as space launches.
The separation ring simulates the Crew Module Adapter that the Crew Module is attached to for flight articles; at 5.5 meters in diameter, it is significantly wider than the SR-118 and the TRS and aeroshells are adapters to connect and streamline the overall flight test vehicle.
(Photo Caption: Elements of the AA-2 Abort Test Booster (ATB) are lifted into place at Launch Complex-46 in April. From left to right, the SR-118 solid rocket motor is lifted onto the launch mount on April 12, the TRS/GCA assembly is lifted up into the mobile service tower to stack on the SR-118 on April 16, and finally, the aeroshell that fits over them is lifted for installation on April 18.)
The combined Crew Module Separation Ring (CSR) assembly was integrated at the Johnson Space Center in Houston last year and shipped to KSC in December. Overall test preparations were slowed down by a five-week long partial government shutdown, but following checkouts with the booster GCA, the assembly was moved into the LASF for integration with the LAS.
“We’re in the LASF and the Launch Abort System is mated to the Crew Module Sep Ring, all the ogives are installed,” Kirasich said in the interview on May 16. “We put over a hundred pounds of RTV — it’s white sealant — to seal up all the gaps, cover up all the fasteners to make sure no water gets in, and we finished the last part of that yesterday and today. Today and tomorrow we’re doing an interface checkout between the LAS and the Crew Module, and then we roll out next Wednesday, the 22nd.”
While out at the pad, booster and the test article will be surrounded by a mobile service tower and hooked up to purge loops to keep their electronics dry. “We have a purge, big purges,” Kirasich said. “One that goes to the Abort Test Booster and then one that goes up to our Flight Test Article and it’s cool, dry air. There’s a big brown cooling cart and it’s got two big hoses, one each to those two vehicles. It’s out there in the damp Florida June summer and we get rained on every day. We don’t because we’ve got a roof over us but it’s still very humid so we keep everything nice and cool and dry.”
The last few weeks of work are to connect everything up, test it, and go through a few training simulations. “At a high level we do our initial stacking operations starting as soon as we get out to the pad, the very next morning,” Voor said, referring to the FTA and ATB.
“When we get out to the pad we’ll stack the FTA on top of the ATB and then we have some installations to do. [We will] do the mating operations between the ATB and the FTA, do the final mates and harness connections for the DFI that’s going to be connected, and then we install the outer mold line panels around the sep ring.”
(Photo Caption: The underside of the Separation Ring that connects the AA-2 Crew Module test article and LAS to the Abort Test Booster is visible as the FTA was lifted onto the transporter recently.)
“Then we’ll do some integrated testing to verify that we’ve got good functionality, that we can talk to the Range, all of our antennas are working,” he continued. “And then we actually have a couple of weeks of contingency built in because we have some potential range conflicts with [another] launch. They’re going to be required to use our control room so we have a couple of contingency weeks in there.”
An Atlas V is scheduled to launch the fifth Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellite (AEHF-5) for the U.S. Air Force in late June. “It’s not really contingency, it’s because we have potential range conflicts so it’s kind of to accommodate for that and for the potential that lightning and bad weather may keep us from getting some of the work done out at the pad,” Voor added.
“We have to clear personnel when there’s lightning out there and of course we’re hitting that time of the year when the lightning storms are coming in every afternoon. We do two launch rehearsals on the 3rd and 8th of June and then we have a Mission Dress Rehearsal on the 19th of June and then the final preps for launch start on about the 22nd of June,” Voor said.
Test focuses on the LAS
During the test the LAS will pull the Crew Module away from the separation ring, which will stay attached to the test booster. Following liftoff the booster will take the vehicle up to a carefully chosen abort condition, where the Crew Module will send the abort command to the LAS to fire the Abort Motor to rapidly get away from the booster and the Attitude Control Motor for steering. Northrop Grumman is the prime contractor for both motors.
“Inside the Crew Module there’s a computer that gets data from SIGIs that senses the accelerations and it’s the computer inside the Crew Module test article that then talks to an avionics box called the Attitude Control Motor Controller, the ACM controller,” Kirasich explained. “The computer in the Crew Module tells us which way to steer and then it’s the ACM controller which controls the pintles and the thrust of the pintles and steers it.”
(SIGI is an acronym of acronyms, Space Integrated GPS/INS or Space Integrated Global Positioning System/Inertial Navigation System.)
Photo Caption: The elements of the flight test vehicle for the AA-2 test on the left. On the right, the elements of the Launch Abort System, which are currently being stacked in the LASF.)
“It’s a closed-loop control system, so it’s sensing rates and that’s what allows it to cover a wider range of survivable initial conditions because you can imagine depending on what happens to the rocket underneath you can have initial rates imparted so the LAS senses those rates, nulls the rates out, and steers away,” Kirasich explained. “Remember we’re going to be launching on a vehicle with solid rocket motors, so one of the scenarios is the rocket tries to chase us, so the LAS does essentially a pitch maneuver to steer it on the flight path and away from the launch vehicle.”
“It’s continuous throughout the duration of the abort firing and actually until it flips the Crew Module over. Actually flipping the Crew Module over it’s just doing a pitch maneuver itself, but it’s a closed-loop control.”
There are eight pintles in the Attitude Control Motor that steer the combined LAS/CM “Launch Abort Vehicle” during an abort. “It’s the valve that modulates the thrust out each one of the nozzles,” Kirasich explained.
“What the pintles do is the total thrust that comes out of all eight nozzles has to remain constant, but it modulates,” he said. “So while one is open on one side it closes the other so it modulates which direction you push.”
“It’s a solid rocket motor; you have to make sure the pressure is always constant so you’ve always got to have the sum total of the pintles open to allow the same total force.”
(Photo Caption: A frame from video of a March test of the Orion LAS Attitude Control Motor. The differential thrust is used to steer the combined LAS and Crew Module during an abort sequence.)
The LAS then separates itself from the simulator after the ACM reorients the Crew Module simulator. The simulator is not equipped with parachutes, but it will continue collecting and transmitting data until ocean impact less than three minutes after liftoff.
Evolution of LAS design
The AA-2 test is the second and last planned abort test for Orion. The first test was Pad Abort-1 (PA-1) in 2010, which tested an early version of the LAS in an abort starting at rest on the ground. At the time, Orion was still a part of a Constellation program that was being shut down ahead of the proposed cancellation.
After the Orion program was re-scoped following its cancellation along with all of Constellation, the AA-2 test was the only in-flight “ascent abort” test brought forward. Data from PA-1 was used as a part of a wide set of modifications to internal and external LAS components.
“PA-1 was a development version of the LAS and after that all the lessons learned from the structure, the three motors, and the controller, there were tweaks made to every one of them to the flight version, which is going to fly on AA-2 and EM-2,” Kirasich said. “The only difference from those to the other missions were the inert motors.”
(Photo Caption: A side-by-side overview of the production LAS configuration (left) and the PA-1 test configuration (right), as briefed at the time of the May 2010, PA-1 test. An early development test of the LAS abort motor in 2008 identified higher than expected acoustic loads which in part led to the move to the current design that included an ogive-shaped fairing that fully covers the Crew Module.)
Both the other missions, Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) in 2014 and Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1, now called Artemis 1)forecast for 2021 are uncrewed, so the abort motor and the ACM are inert and can’t be fired. Only the jettison motor is live for those two flights, which allows the LAS and its mass to be jettisoned during those and other nominal launches to improve overall launch vehicle performance to orbit insertion.
In an abort case, the jettison motor separates the LAS from the Crew Module at the end of the LAS firing sequence. Aerojet Rocketdyne is the prime contractor for the jettison motor.
The outer mold line changed after PA-1, with more aerodynamic fairings added around the abort motor and the Crew Module. “There is a very fond name for what we flew on PA-1,” Kirasich noted. “It was called the ‘party hat’ and if you looked at it, it kind of looked like a party hat.”
“There was always a cover at the bottom of the LAS that covers the Crew Module so when you fire the abort engines you don’t put char on the windows and all that,” he explained. “There were several iterations of the party hat but when we built PA-1 that was the version of the cover if you will.”
“And then [with] natural design maturity in the 2010-ish, [2009-2010]-ish time frame we developed this ogive which is a much smoother aerodynamic surface with the fillets,” he added. “We changed from the party hat to the ogives to provide a more aerodynamically sound vehicle, so it transitions through the atmosphere cleaner and the abort loads when the abort motor fires, these ogives provide better damping of the sound waves through to the Crew Module structure, so it had several benefits.”
The ogive fairing is made up of four panels, which have to account for access inside the Crew Module and other external protuberances around its circumference. A hatch on one of the panels will be linked to the hatch on flight articles.
“This is the first time we’re flying this config in the LAS,” Kirasich said. “[This] is a production LAS and that is for all practical purposes the first production version of our LAS hatch.”
(Photo Caption: The hatch in the LAS ogive fairing is open to allow access to the Crew Module test article for AA-2 in early May. The side hatch to Orion flight article Crew Modules will be linked to the LAS hatch to allow flight crews to more quickly exit in the contingency case of an emergency launch pad evacuation. The AA-2 Crew Module test article has a bolt-on hatch.)
“On EM-1 and EM-2 there’s an interconnection between the Crew Module and the LAS hatch such that you open the Crew Module it pushes the LAS hatch open.” Each of the ogive panels is unique.
“They’re very similar but they’re not identical,” Kirasich added. “Another one has got a cutout for where the umbilical comes in, there’s an umbilical between the Service Module and the Crew Module and not only does it have to go into the Crew Module but it has to go through a cutout in the LAS ogives.”
“There’s other things like there’s vent lines and all that, so everyone is a little bit different.”
“There’s little what they call tangential fittings that control how the tangential forces are put on the [fairing] so they all have their little cutouts,” Voor added. “They’re definitely unique and they are not interchangeable.”
Outer mold line changes are only part of the differences between the PA-1 and AA-2 designs. “After PA-1 we made small changes to just about everything,” Kirasich said.
“There were small changes to each one of the motors. The abort motor that flew on PA-1 had a maximum thrust of five-hundred thousand pounds and after PA-1 we shrunk it slightly and our flight version for the rest of Orion it’ll have a thrust of four-hundred thousand pounds.”
“Once the system was fully designed and we knew what the Crew Module weighed, we did not need quite as much maximum thrust and by going from five-hundred to four-hundred thousand pounds we were able once again to reduce the acoustic loads on the spacecraft, so that was the big change for the abort motor.”
“Moving up the stack on the jettison motor, we actually changed the design of the insulation inside the motor to make it more reliable,” he continued. “The jettison motor is the motor that has to fire every single flight and we learned something about the way the insulation protected the rest of the structure from the hot gases inside the motor, so on that one there were some very small insulation tweaks.”
“Continuing up the stack all the way to the ACM, that worked on PA-1 but you can imagine these are really hot, super hot, very high pressure gases, imagine being a solid structure inside of a burning solid rocket motor. When we did the development test prior to PA-1, we didn’t have the factors of safety.”
“So through development testing we verified and improved the structural factor of safety with these pintles in the ACM since the last one,” he added. “And by the way we redesigned the controller to eliminate a few quirks of the initial design.”
Quelle: NS
----
Update: 30.05.2019
.
NASA still aiming for 2020 first launch of SLS
WASHINGTON — NASA believes it is still possible to perform the first launch of the Space Launch System before the end of 2020 even if the agency decides to retain some version of a key static-fire test of the rocket’s core stage.
Speaking at a May 28 meeting of the NASA Advisory Council’s human exploration and operations committee, Bill Hill, deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development, said that the agency has yet to decide whether to perform what’s known as the “green run,” where the core stage and its four RS-25 engines are fired for eight minutes on a test stand at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.
“We provided the agency with a recommendation. The agency is contemplating it,” he said, not discussing what that recommendation stated about the green run. “Today, our baseline is a green run.”
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told a House committee March 27 that the agency was considering skipping the green run and instead shipping the core stage directly from its manufacturing site, the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, to the Kennedy Space Center. A brief test firing of the stage would take place on the pad at KSC in place of the full green run test. Skipping the green run test could cut several months from the schedule of the long-delayed SLS.
However, many outside NASA raised concerns about doing away with the green run test entirely. “There is no other test approach that will gather the critical full-scale integrated propulsion system operational data required to ensure safe operations,” Patricia Saunders, chair of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, said at a meeting of her committee April 25. “I cannot emphasize more strongly that we advise NASA to retain this test.”
While Hill said no decision has been made about the green run test, it would likely be adjusted if it is retained. “We’re looking to optimize it, make it as short as possible,” he said. NASA has assigned Bill Wrobel, the former director of NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, to be the “point person” for planning for the green run.
Those changes include adding an additional shift of workers. “One of the things we discovered that was a little bit disappointing was that their schedule was basically based on a single shift,” Hill said. NASA is now looking two 10-hour shifts to speed up work.
Those changes, he said, should limit the total schedule needed for the green run to six months or less. If Boeing, the SLS core stage prime contractor, is able to complete the stage and ship it to Stennis by the end of this year, that would allow the core stage to go to KSC by the end of June 2020, assuming the green run test goes as planned.
If so, he added, “that in itself could still support a late 2020 launch date” for the first SLS launch, formerly known as Exploration Mission (EM) 1 but recently renamed Artemis-1 as part of the agency’s decision to call the overall lunar exploration effort the Artemis program.
“Obviously, everything has to go perfectly” to maintain that 2020 launch date, he said, “but there’s a shot.”
Other elements of the Artemis-1 mission are also coming together, notably the Orion spacecraft that will be launched into cislunar space on that uncrewed flight. The crew module and the European-built service module are completing testing at KSC and will be integrated later this summer, then shipped to NASA’s Plum Brook Station in Ohio in August or September for environmental testing before returning to KSC late in the year.
That work on Orion is “fifty-some” days behind schedule, Hill said. “We’re working that to see if we can recover some of that.”
Quelle: SN
----
Update: 4.06.2019
.
Surround Sound - Orion Service Module for Artemis 1 Undergoes Acoustic Tests
Orion’s service module for NASA’s Artemis 1 mission completed acoustic testing inside the Operations and Checkout Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida last week. The tests were the latest step in preparing for the agency’s first uncrewed flight test of Orion on the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.
Teams completed the test May 25, 2019, and technicians will analyze the data collected during the tests to check for flaws uncovered by the acoustic environment. During the testing, engineers secured the service module inside the test cell and then attached microphones, strain gauges and accelerometers to it. They conducted a series of five tests, with acoustic levels ranging from 128 to 140 decibels – as loud as a jet engine during takeoff.
Artemis 1 will be the first mission launching Orion on the SLS rocket from Kennedy’s Launch Pad 39B. The mission will take Orion thousands of miles past the Moon on an approximately three-week test flight. Orion will return to Earth and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California, where it will be retrieved and returned to Kennedy.
Quelle: NASA
+++
NASA Reaches New Milestone on Complex, Large Rocket
At approximately 190 feet, about the size of 12 cars parked end-to-end, the stage in its current configuration is the largest rocket stage the agency has built since the Saturn V stages that first sent humans to the Moon nearly 50 years ago. The completed core stage, which includes two propellant tanks as well as four RS-25 engines, will tower at 212 feet. It, along with the twin five-segment solid rocket boosters, will produce the majority of the power to send the SLS and Orion to space.
“Building and assembling this massive integrated propulsion and avionics stage for the world’s most powerful rocket, the only launch vehicle that can return astronauts to the Moon, is an engineering feat,” said Julie Bassler, SLS stages manager. “To manufacture the Space Launch System, we are working with more than 1,000 companies across the country. It’s truly America’s rocket.”
This significant program milestone comes after crews completed the second of three major activities to join the liquid hydrogen fuel tank to the upper part of the core stage. The upper part is made up of three previously connected large structures: the forward skirt that houses the rocket’s flight computers, the liquid oxygen propellant tank, and the intertank that holds more avionics and attaches to the rocket’s powerful boosters. Technicians horizontally connected the liquid hydrogen tank to the intertank using 360 bolts. NASA and Boeing, the SLS prime contractor, will now complete outfitting the engine section before integrating it, along with the four RS-25 engines, to the rest of the stage, completing the immense core stage in its entirety.
In response to President Trump’s charge to return Americans to the Moon by 2024, engineers and technicians revised the core stage assembly plan to mate the individual structures horizontally rather than vertically. These milestones — combined with new production tools and the team’s responsiveness — keep core stage production on track for completion by the end of the year.
“NASA is constantly looking for ways to get work done more efficiently so that we can get astronauts landing on the Moon by 2024,” said Ben Birkenstock, the SLS stages vehicle assembly lead. “The NASA and Boeing team is learning while building this first core stage. The decision to integrate the core stage structures horizontally demonstrates our efforts to continuously improve our operations.”
The SLS team continues to make progress on other elements for the rocket’s first three missions. In April, the last of 16 RS-25 engines from the space shuttle program passed inspection, capping a 51-month acceptance test series at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi and clearing all engines suitable for flight. The manufacture and checkout of all 10 motor segments for the twin boosters on the first Artemis flight were completed in January. NASA and Northrop Grumman technicians in Promontory, Utah, applied insulation to all the booster segments for Artemis 2 in the spring. The solid rocket boosters and four RS-25 engines produce a combined thrust of 8.8 million pounds during launch and flight.
Other parts of the rocket for the first flight, like the launch vehicle stage adapter and the solid rocket boosters, will soon be delivered to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The interim cryogenic propulsion stage that will give NASA’s Orion spacecraft the push needed to get to the Moon and the adapter that will connect that stage to the spacecraft have already been delivered to Kennedy.
NASA is working to land the first woman and next man on the Moon by 2024. SLS and Orion, along with the Gateway in orbit around the Moon, are NASA’s backbone for deep space exploration. SLS is the only rocket that can send Orion, astronauts and supplies to the Moon on a single mission
Ascent Abort-2 Preparations ‘A Really Good Test Run’ For Artemis 1
NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center
NASA is gearing up for a test of the system that will help keep astronauts safe when traveling to the Moon aboard agency’s Orion spacecraft. The Ascent Abort-2 (AA-2) flight test will put Orion’s launch abort system (LAS) to work in a high-flying, fast-paced trial without crew aboard.
The test paves the way for Artemis 2, the first flight of astronauts aboard Orion and the powerful new Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on a mission to carry humans around the Moon for the first time in half a century. Following Artemis 2, NASA will send the first woman and next man to step foot on the Moon in 2024. For NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) and Jacobs Test and Operations Contract (TOSC) teams, preparations for AA-2 also have provided invaluable opportunities to prepare for Artemis 1, the uncrewed first flight of SLS and Orion.
“AA-2 is really a ‘first-flow’ mission,” said Sean Arrieta, NASA EGS element operations manager in the Launch Abort System Facility (LASF), where the Orion crew module flight test article was integrated with the protective payload fairing and launch abort tower. This process marked the first time both elements were prepared using the same sequence and procedures that will be used going forward, providing valuable experience for the team.
The entire test will last about three minutes, but the teamwork and lessons honed during the months leading up to it will benefit Artemis missions for years to come.
Currently slated for July 2, the AA-2 flight test will lift off from Space Launch Complex 46 at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station atop an abort test booster provided by Northrop Grumman. The booster will send a test version of the Orion spacecraft with the launch abort system to an altitude of about six miles traveling at more than 1,000 miles per hour. The abort motor will quickly whisk the crew module away from the booster, and the attitude control motor will maneuver the assembly into position to jettison the crew module.
Over the past several months, teams have been working to perfect the many processes, procedures and handoffs the combined team will use for both AA-2 and the first Artemis mission.
Inside the Launch Abort System Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, workers are completing the integration of a test version of the Orion crew module with the Launch Abort System on May 18, 2019.
“We tried to plan the work as we would for future missions,” said mechanical engineer Alex Mire. She’s led TOSC’s AA-2 operations inside the LASF, determining scheduling, drawing, requirements reviews and more. Mire pointed out that much of the AA-2 hardware is so similar to Artemis 1 or Artemis 2 that there’s only a letter difference in the part numbers. “We’ve made a lot of updates to our procedures, which should help the processing flow go smoothly.”
Several organizations have been involved in getting AA-2 off the ground, and with so many groups handling a variety of elements, one big challenge facing EGS/TOSC was navigating the differences to ensure that hardware and human teams were working well together.
“All these different entities had their own processes and cultures, and many of them had never been to Kennedy,” said Jim Bolton, EGS AA-2 operations lead. “It sounds easy: ‘Here’s a hangar, do your work.’ But it’s not as simple as that.”
Lockheed Martin built the launch abort system inside the LASF, then handed off to the EGS/TOSC team in place at the facility. That team brought the crew module and separation ring to the facility and handled all the integration. The same process will be followed for all future Artemis missions with Orion.
According to Arrieta, this arrangement has allowed EGS to work very closely with contractor teammates.
“It allows for better integration of information,” he said. “It’s good for the health of the combined team and has led to a high level of trust.”
The Orion LAS rolled out of the LASF around 6 p.m. on May 22 for the more than nine-hour trek to the launch pad, and it was later hoisted into position atop the waiting abort test booster. Meanwhile, in the LASF, the processing flow for Artemis 1 can begin.
“AA-2 shows this workforce and the nation that we’re on the precipice of doing what Kennedy Space Center was built to do: processing and launching spaceflight hardware,” Arrieta said. “It’s a foundation, a concrete stepping stone our program can stand on and say, ‘Look at what we’ve accomplished—and where we’re about to go.’”
Quelle: NASA
----
Update: 19.06.2019
.
Orion a blast from the past for NASA, sort of
Shooting for the stars is taking on a very retro look lately.
To folks who can remember the sight of space explorers squeezing into a small capsule and then days later splashing into the sea, NASA’s upcoming Orion project invites a lot of nostalgia. Once again astronauts will blast off atop a rocket and be plucked out of the water.
NASA officials said the similarities — to the layman — are unmistakable and expected.
“That is the most common perception I get,” said Charlie Lundquist, Orion deputy program manager. “It’s 50 years later, why doesn’t it look like Star Wars?”
The answer is simply that a lot of the facts about space travel have not changed — such as which shapes and safety options work best — even as the details about what crafts are made of and the electronics behind them is a galaxy far, far away from Apollo.
Jim Rice is shown at NASA’s Johnson Space Center working on the Orion Spacecraft launch abort system Friday, April 13, 2018, in Houston.
Little, if anything, has changed about some aspects of space travel, Lundquist said, such as the intense friction of re-entry that makes a conical shape superior.
“The laws of physics are the same now as they were in the ‘60s,” Lundquist said.
Rachel Kraft, spokeswoman for the Orion project, compared the capsule that carried Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to the moon nearly 50 years ago in 1969 and the Orion vehicles perhaps destined for Mars to cars built in 1969 and 2019. The cars share some similarities while built a half-century apart.
“They still have the basic structure of a shape on four wheels because that is what works best on the road,” Kraft said.
The Orion spacecraft is a critical part of the country’s plans to return to the moon — and travel beyond it. Two missions for Orion and the Space Launch System meant to shoot it into space are planned prior to 2024, one unmanned, followed by a crewed mission.
In the interim, along with the launch system — the most powerful rockets NASA has ever designed — crews are constructing and testing Orion crafts. They’re being tested for aerodynamics, tossed into water and run through the paces of everything from weight balance to tolerance to high temperatures.
Beneath the Surface
Orion and Apollo might share a shape, but there are many, many differences between the two crafts beyond casual observation.
For one thing, Orion is far larger, almost four feet wider in diameter and capable of taking up to six astronauts to the International Space Station or around the moon. Apollo only had cramped room for three.
The inside and outside of the two crafts are about as similar as your grandmother’s rotary phone and a new smart phone. Sure, they’re both phones, but one gave you a cord range of about 30 square feet and the other lets you a post a Yelp review from Yellowstone National Park.
Lundquist said Orion comes with “10,000 times faster computing than we had back then,” which allows for redundancies, sensors and automation that Apollo engineers and astronauts could not dream of.
The 970 tiles on the exterior of Orion are similar to those on the outside of the Space Shuttle. Materials, especially composites that are lighter and stronger than the best materials available for Apollo, make for a better craft, and a far safer one, Lundquist said, .
“The spacecraft robustness and redundancy and resiliency is light years from Apollo,” he said.
Different missions
Another difference is the historical era in which Apollo and Orion originate, Lundquist said.
“There are a lot of competing national priorities now and beating the Soviets in space is not one of them,” he said.
Apollo was developed during the Cold War, which ramped up spending on space projects.
“The big push was get a man on the moon,” Lundquist said. “Beat the Soviet Union.”
Apollo was all-American, while Orion is a team effort. The service module, meant to fuel and supply the crew capsule, was developed by the European Space Agency while NASA completes the crew capsule.
Also unlike Apollo, the goal of Orion isn’t a single mission to the surface of the moon. The new capsule is considered the starting point for ferrying researchers into low Earth orbit and a space station, along with possible trips to the moon, around the moon and one day perhaps Mars.
Those efforts are also being considered as NASA hopes to reduce costs, through reusable technologies and outsourcing.
“We want to make space more affordable,” Lundquist said, noting the private investment. “You can see a place where NASA is trying to cultivate that going forward.”
When he thinks back, the different challenges Apollo faced but conquered give him perspective of what current NASA officials are achieving.
“It is almost humbling, frankly,” Lundquist said. “We have got such incredible technology and they did it with slide rules.”
A NASA engineer works on the separation ring that will join the program's test capsule to the rocket that will be used during Orion's Ascent Abort 2 test next year, at NASA's Johnson Space Center, Thursday, Sept. 13, 2018 in Houston. Engineers are currently testing systems that will fire during the capsules flight that will test the ability
Engineers engage a series of sensors attached to the capsule that will be used during Orion's Ascent Abort 2 test next year, at NASA's Johnson Space Center, Thursday, Sept. 13, 2018 in Houston. Explosives will be used to jettison data recorders from the capsule during the ascent-abort test. Engineers are currently testing systems that will
Astronaut Nicole Mann, left, shows Ivanka Trump, senior adviser to the president, the Orion capsule mock up as she gives Trump a tour of the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility at NASA's Johnson Space Center on Thursday, Sept. 20, 2018, in Houston.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine (left) toured the a Orion Crew Module with Jon Olansen (center), Accent Abort-2 Crew Module Project Manager and Mark Kirasich, Orion Program Manager Thursday, Aug. 2, 2018, in Houston.
Lee Morin, astronaut mission specialist and supervisor of the Rapid Prototyping Lab gives a tour of the Orion capsule mock up at NASA's Johnson Space Center on Thursday, April 26, 2018, in Houston.
NASA flight controllers rehearse for the Orion capsule's first mission in the Blue Flight Control Room in Christopher C. Kraft, Jr. Mission Control Center (MCC) at the Johnson Space Center on Thursday, April 10, 2014, in Houston. The Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1), is scheduled to launch later this year.
Jon Olansen, project manager for Orion Ascent Abort-2 crew module walks past the Orion boilerplate test vehicle at NASA's Johnson Space Center on Thursday, April 26, 2018, in Houston.
NASA engineers work on the separation ring that will join the program's test capsule to the rocket that will be used during Orion's Ascent Abort 2 test next year, at NASA's Johnson Space Center, Thursday, Sept. 13, 2018 in Houston. Engineers are currently testing systems that will fire during the capsules flight that will test the ability of
A model of NASA's Orion spacecraft is picked up by a crane after being dropped from a C-17 to test the Capsule Parachute Assembly System at the U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground on Wednesday, April 23, 2014, in Yuma. For the test, which is the 13th of 17 planned tests, the test vehicle was dropped from 13,000 feet to simulate conditions that the
Quelle: Houston Chronicle