Parachute system tested at Yuma Proving Ground returns Orion from 1.4 million mile space journey
Most people associate space travel with tremendous speed.
Yet tremendous speed is only half of the equation of manned space exploration.
Whereas a spacecraft has to travel at approximately 20,000 miles per hour to escape the Earth, to return its occupants safely to the ground the same capsule needs to be decelerated from 24,500 miles per hour to speeds slower than most people drive automobiles on residential streets.
Meanwhile, the extreme friction generated by the capsule hurtling back into Earth’s atmosphere at such a tremendous speed means it’s exterior heats to more than 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Safely landing under these conditions is a tremendous undertaking, and large parachutes play an important role in accomplishing it. The
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) subjected the parachute system of the Orion space capsule to multiple developmental
and qualification tests at U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground (YPG) in recent years.
The Orion Multipurpose Crew Capsule is a state-of-the-art reusable module designed to take four astronauts to the moon and Mars, and the Capsule Parachute Assembly System (CPAS) parachute system that brings it safely back to Earth is just
as sophisticated. The rope that makes up the parachutes’ cord is made of Kevlar, the strong synthetic fiber used in body armor: the change was made from steel as a result of testing at YPG. Each main parachute consists of 10,000 square feet of fabric: the CPAS system is designed to deploy sequentially and pass through two stages prior to being fully open: on re-entry, two drogue parachutes deploy to slow the hurtling 10-ton capsule prior to three main parachutes taking it down to a languid landing speed of 17 miles per hour.
Further, the parachute system is designed with redundancies meant to protect the safe landing of astronauts even in extreme scenarios such as two parachutes failing, or a catastrophic mishap shortly after takeoff. In many of the tests at YPG, evaluators intentionally rigged one or more of the CPAS’ parachutes to not deploy to ensure that the remaining functioning chutes could withstand the additional stress of speed and mass the failure would cause.
In addition to being able to outfit the test vehicle with far more instrumentation and cameras than would be possible if it was coming from space, testing over land at YPG made recovery and examination of the parachutes easier than when the capsule lands in the ocean following a real space mission.
The years of hard work paid off. Following a launch on Nov. 16, the uncrewed Orion took a 1.4 million mile round-trip journey that took it past the moon, reentering the atmosphere and splashing down safely in the Pacific Ocean after the CPAS deployed without a hitch on Dec. 11. NASA has announced plans to recreate the flight with a crew of astronauts on board in 2024, and make a lunar landing as early as 2025.
YPG has hosted developmental testing for NASA since the earliest days of the space program. The precursor to the lunar rover used during the last moon landings in 1971 and 1972, dubbed the ‘mobility test article,’ was tested at the proving ground in 1966.