Testing Orion’s soundness
Crew module to be struck with acoustic blasts
Enough speakers to fill three tractor-trailers soon will pummel a spaceship in Littleton with powerful sound waves.
While this may sound like an aggressive way to deal with aliens in a bad sci-fi movie, it’s actually real-life technology called direct field acoustic, or DFA, testing that Littleton-based Lockheed Martin Space Systems engineers are going to try out on the Orion spacecraft.
DFA is a somewhat recently developed method that tests how well structures can withstand various sound pressure fields.
The test entails placing customized, high-energy speaker towers in a circle around Orion. Those speakers will blast varying energy at the vehicle using a specific pre-programmed algorithm.
In this case, Lockheed Martin wants to see whether the method will accurately mimic the sound pressure that Orion will experience during launch and ascent back to Earth.
“If the method proves to be an accurate representation of (NASA’s Space Launch System rocket) launch and ascent acoustic loads, it will be used to evaluate and verify Orion’s ability to withstand those loads during its next mission, Exploration Mission-1,” a release from Lockheed Martin says.
While in Littleton, the Orion crew module will also undergo a final decontamination and further post-flight analysis that should conclude next year.
Lockheed Martin is Orion’s prime contractor, and about 1,000 employees throughout several of Space Systems’ locations have fingerprints on some aspect of the project, with just under 800 of them in Littleton.
Orion blasted off aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket Dec. 6 on its Experimental Flight Test-1, an uncrewed 4-hour, 24-minute journey more than 3,600 miles into space.
NASA intends Orion to be the spacecraft that takes the first humans to Mars. Orion’s next flight, the uncrewed Experimental Mission-1, will be in 2018 on NASA’s new SLS rocket, which will surpass the Delta IV Heavy as the most powerful launch vehicle in existence.