One small step for NASA’s Orion ...
Flight marks bid to resume space exploration
CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA. — NASA’s quest to send astronauts out into the solar system begins this week with a two-laps-around-Earth test flight.
The new Orion spacecraft is not going to Mars just yet; Thursday’s debut will be unmanned and last just 4 1/2 hours. But it will be the farthest a built-for-humans capsule has flown since the Apollo moon missions, shooting 5,800 kilometres out into space to gain enough momentum to re-enter the atmosphere at a scorching 32,000 km/h.
The dry run, if all goes well, will end with a Pacific splashdown. U.S. navy ships will recover the capsule for future use. This initial Orion is rigged with 1,200 sensors to gauge its durability for the day when astronauts do climb aboard during the decade ahead. Possible destinations include an asteroid to be corralled in lunar orbit for human exploration in the 2020s, followed by Mars in the 2030s.
“We’re approaching this as pioneers,” said William Hill of NASA’s exploration systems development office. “We’re going out to stay eventually. ... It’s many, many decades away, but that’s our intent.”
Lockheed Martin Corp. built the capsule and is staging the $370-million test flight for NASA.
Orion is NASA’s first new spacecraft for humans in more than a generation. Unlike the capsules under development for space station crew transport, Orion is meant for the long haul.
“We need a spacecraft that’s going to be sturdy enough and robust enough” to carry astronauts well beyond low-Earth orbit for weeks and months at a time, said Lockheed Martin’s Bryan Austin, a former NASA shuttle flight director who will oversee Orion’s maiden voyage.
For this orbital tryout, a Delta IV rocket will hoist Orion from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Liftoff is scheduled for 5:05 a.m. MT. Future launches will use the mega rocket, still under development by NASA, known as SLS or Space Launch System. The first Orion-SLS launch is targeted for 2018, unmanned, followed by the first piloted mission in 2021.
But don’t confuse Orion with NASA’s old-time Apollo capsules. The 3.3-metre-tall Orion capsule is designed to hold four astronauts, one more than Apollo. For relatively short outings of three weeks or so, Orion could accommodate six.
“People often ask us, ‘Hey, this thing looks like a capsule, it looks like Apollo,’ and people will confuse that with ‘it’s not new,’” said Scott Wilson, NASA’s Orion production operations manager. While physics drives the capsule’s outer bell shape, “everything else in the capsule is state of the art,” he said.
“Everything, from the thrusters, from the environmental control systems, to the structure itself” is benefiting from advances in technology, Wilson said. With no one on board, this first Orion will have aluminum in place of seats for ballast, simulators instead of cockpit displays and, obviously, no lifesupport.
The heat shield on Orion’s base, designed to protect the craft from the searing temperatures of atmospheric reentry, is five metres across and is the biggest, most advanced ever made, according to NASA. On this flight, Orion will reach close to 2,200 C, not quite 2,760 C that would be generated from a moon mission. That’s why Orion will aim for a 5,800-km-high peak altitude, more than 14 times higher than the International Space Station — to pick up enough speed to come back fast and hot.