Orion launch test holds key to next step to moon with ‘safest spacecraft designed’
Chasing Orion: This is the eighth in a series of stories leading up to Tuesday’s launch of Orion’s launch abort system.
In the span of just three minutes, NASA personnel will know if their plan to put humans on the moon in the coming years can remain on track.
That’s not a lot of time. Listening to Elton John’s “Rocket Man” or David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” would take longer.
But the test of the Orion spacecraft’s launch abort system Tuesday at Cape Canaveral, Fla., is the most important of the Orion program: It will determine if the capsule’s four-person crew can escape if the rocket explodes in the seconds after liftoff.
And astronauts cannot strap into an Orion capsule destined for the moon until the escape system is in working order.
“What we want to do is have confidence in all the systems. We’re putting the emergency system to the test,” said Mark Kirasich, Orion program manager. “This is one of the tests we do in order to certify that Orion is ready for people.”
The world was provided a stark reminder of why a launch abort system is important last year, when a Russian Soyuz spacecraft transporting an American astronaut to the International Space Station suffered a rocket booster failure and was forced to make an emergency landing. Both astronauts on board emerged without injury.
To test the system, NASA built a mock-up of the crew capsule — one that will never be used again — that lacks seats, parachutes and oxygen sys
tems, but is chock-full of the sensors, flight computers and communication systems needed for a successful test. Personnel at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston have been working on the mock-up since April 2018.
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. Now that President Donald Trump’s administration has directed NASA to put humans on the moon four years early, in 2024 instead of 2028, it’s even more important that the test goes smoothly the first time to avoid delays.
“This is a bold and exciting mission to get people to the moon,” Kirasich said. “We don’t feel pressure; it motivated the team.”
But conducting a flawless test of Orion’s emergency abort system is the least of NASA’s worries when it comes to the 2024 timeline.
Funding for the endeavor is far from secured, and the schedule delays that have plagued NASA’s heavy-lift rocket make this goal even more questionable.
Revamped concept
The magic happens Tuesday morning at 31,000 feet.
Once the mock-up capsule reaches that altitude — assuming everything goes as planned — it will separate from the rocket in a half-second, pulling the capsule — and its imaginary crew — out of harm’s way quickly.
To make the instantaneous getaway, the capsule is outfitted with four large bolts that connect it to the launch abort system. The bolts will automatically explode if the systems detect a problem with the rocket, separating the crew module from the boosters so those on board can escape a fiery death.
Because of this system, Orion is the “safest spacecraft designed by NASA,” the space agency has continued to tout.
It’s not a new concept, though. A launch abort system was used on Mercury. And though Gemini used ejection seats, NASA brought the abort system back for Apollo.
But NASA took a 30-year hiatus from the system during the space shuttle era.
“The shuttle’s abort scenarios were altogether different beasts,” Jason Davis, digital editor for the Planetary Society, wrote in 2014. “They involved wild acrobatics.”
And they did nothing to prevent the space shuttle Challenger accident in 1986, which exploded 73 seconds after liftoff, killing all seven astronauts on board.
“For the shuttle, there wasn’t much you could do if the entire rocket stack suddenly fell apart around the orbiter,” Davis said.
NASA hasn’t launched astronauts in its own rockets from American soil since 2011, when the space shuttle program was shuttered. But when they do — when Orion finally takes flight — it will have an emergency abort option.
“Critics have questioned why NASA didn’t try out next-generation abort systems like built-in thrusters or powered landings,” Davis said. “They argue Orion is simply an Apollo redux. … But other considerations aside, capsules and launch abort towers are a safe bet for a government agency trying to please a long list of bureaucrats, politicians and industry leaders.”
A stark reminder
More than three decades after the Challenger explosion, the world again was reminded why launch abort systems are important.
NASA astronaut Nick Hague was strapping into a Soyuz in early October, ready for a flight to the International Space Station alongside Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin. There are risks associated with all spaceflight, but this one was as routine as it gets.
Astronauts are ferried to and from the space station aboard the Russian space taxis every six months or so, and there hadn’t been a mission abort for a Soyuz in 35 years.
But Oct. 11 was different. About two minutes into the launch, just as the Soyuz reached the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space, a light in the capsule started blinking. There’d been a rocket failure.
The Soyuz automatically initiated an abort sequence, forcing an emergency landing that robbed the two men of their chance to live in space, and grounded U.S. astronauts until a cause was determined. NASA has relied on Russia to ferry its astronauts to space for eight years.
In the days after the accident, Hague noted how fortunate he was to be alive — and how fortunate he was that the abort system worked.
“There are thousands of people working tirelessly to put these systems in place, these systems that saved us,” Hague told the Houston Chronicle in October. “I’m just thankful that they do their job and take it so seriously and that the system was ready to go. That thought helped temper my disappointment at not being on the station right now.”
Russia ultimately determined the cause of the failure — a malfunctioning sensor that caused the first and second stages of the rocket launching their Soyuz spacecraft to crash into each other — and reshuffled flights. Russia has sent numerous missions to and from the space station since without incident, including Hague and Ovchinin, who are set to return this fall.
Watching and waiting
Deadlines were already tight for Orion, which initially was scheduled to be launched by the agency’s behemoth Space Launch System rocket in 2017.
But SLS has continually been plagued by burgeoning costs and schedule delays, in turn pushing back the date of Orion’s first human launch.
Then, the Trump administration in March called on NASA to accelerate the schedule for putting Americans on the moon by four years.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has admitted that the schedule is “aggressive.” In early June, he announced that the moon 2024 program, now know as Artemis, would need $20 billion to $30 billion — or $4 billion to $5 billion each year — to reach the goal. For the coming budget year, NASA has asked Congress for just $1.6 billion — and lawmakers largely have ignored that request.
Also concerning is a federal watchdog report that showed the agency has repeatedly masked the true cost and delays of SLS. According to the Government Accountability Office, the cost of SLS has gone up almost 30 percent, or nearly $2 billion, and the first launch of the OrionSLS duo — which will not have humans on board — might not happen until June 2021.
Despite all these problems, NASA has continued to say it can reach the moon by 2024. But they won’t be able to put humans on Orion unless Tuesday’s test is a success.
Kirasich currently doesn’t have a backup plan in place should Tuesday’s test fail; how they respond to a failure depends on what doesn’t work.
“We would just have to look around and see what makes sense,” he said. “It will all depend on the circumstances.”