ONE SMALL TEST, ONE GIANT SUCCESS
NASA’s Orion module passes its weight and emergency abort trial, heads to Ohio for the next step in America’s return to the moon
Chasing Orion: This is the third in a series of stories leading up to the April 2019 launch of Orion’s launch abort system, which is managed by NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
From a spot seated on the concrete floor in the Johnson Space Center warehouse, Jim Rice raised his arms above his head like a conductor preparing to lead his orchestra through a musical score.
Instead of keeping musicians in sync, Rice was directing personnel at NASA’s Houston center through a mass and center of gravity test for the 22,000-pound space capsule sitting high above his head.
The test is one of the most important that the module — a simplified version of the Orion spacecraft, which will take humans back to the moon for the first time in 50 years — will undergo before its April 2019 launch to test what will be Orion’s primary safety feature: the launch abort system.
The module is being built specifically to test this system, which will allow the spacecraft’s fourperson crew to escape if the rocket explodes. And because of that, the module’s mass and center of gravity must be exactly the same as Orion’s will
be when humans are on board.
“For this vehicle, we want it to mimic the flight characteristics with the crew on board,” project manager Jon Olansen said. “So, we have target mass properties that we’re trying to meet … so that when we do the flight test in April, we can directly correlate the performance to exactly what Orion would be like if the system had to be used.”
At Rice’s direction, Johnson Space Center personnel adjusted the giant metal frame holding the 11-foot-tall module. It slowly started to tilt, personnel taking notes and snapping pictures, until it reached a 90 degree angle.
Workers jotted down data points. And then they did the test again. And again. And then, they did it another time.
In total, the module underwent four strenuous days of testing. And as staff packed it up for its Monday departure on a multiday journey to NASA’s Ohio-based Glenn Research Center, Olansen and his team were pleased the project was on track to meet the April launch date. The launch will last three minutes, in which the module will separate from a rocket at 31,000 feet in a halfsecond.
“Everything went very smoothly,” Olansen said Friday.
The Orion spacecraft has been in various stages of design for nearly two decades, its destination oscillating between the moon and Mars depending on White House leadership.
A return to the moon is a top priority for President Donald Trump’s administration, and his $19.9 billion proposed budget for the next fiscal year tasks NASA with launching an unmanned Orion flight by 2021, followed by a launch of Americans around the moon in 2023.
The simplified module will not be reused once the test is complete; additional modules for the unmanned and crewed missions are under construction elsewhere. Orion’s Space Launch System — the most powerful rocket NASA has ever built — as well as the ground systems for launch, also are being developed.
Johnson personnel also are designing Orion’s cockpit, flight software, spacesuits and parachutes. Johnson is home to the nation’s astronaut corps, where human space flight research and training take place. It also is home to the International Space Station’s mission operations and the Orion program.
From start to finish, the abort system test is expected to account for only $256 million — less than 2.5% of the program’s more than $11 billion budget, according to NASA.
The test’s cost is in part because the module being used for the test is a simplified version of Orion. It lacks seats, oxygen systems and parachutes, but contains the minimum systems needed for a successful test, such as flight computers, communication systems and about 800 data sensors. Johnson began outfitting the module with these systems when it arrived at the Houston center in March.
The simplified module will be in Ohio for about a month, where it will undergo additional testing. Then it will return to Johnson in mid-September so personnel can attach the module to the separation ring, which links the module and the rocket booster, allowing it to separate from the rocket if necessary.
In the meantime, Johnson personnel will begin outfitting the separation ring much like they did the module several months ago.
“Working on the separation ring will be a little bit simpler than the module,” Olansen said. “It will take a few weeks, versus a few months.”