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| NASA Headquarters in Washington DC [FILE PHOTO] |
Washington: Recent engineering advances by NASA and its industry
partners across the country show important progress toward Exploration Flight
Test-1 (EFT-1), the next step to launching humans to deep space.
The uncrewed
EFT-1 mission, launching from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida in 2014,
will test the re-entry performance of the agency's Orion capsule, the most
advanced spacecraft ever designed, which will carry astronauts farther into
space than ever before.
"These recent
milestones are laying the foundation for our first flight test of Orion in
2014," said Dan Dumbacher, deputy associate administrator for exploration
systems development at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The work being
done to prepare for the flight test is really a nationwide effort and we have a
dedicated team committed to our goal of expanding the frontier of space."
A tool that will
allow the titanium skeleton of the Orion heat shield to be bolted to its carbon
fiber skin is at the Denver facility of the spacecraft's prime contractor
Lockheed Martin. This will enable workers to begin assembling the two pieces of
the heat shield. Almost 3,000 bolts are needed to hold the skeleton to the
skin. A special stand was built to align the skin on the skeleton as holes for
the bolts are drilled. Work to bolt the skeleton to the skin will be completed
in January. The heat shield then will be shipped to Textron Defense Systems
near Boston where the final layer, an ablative material very similar to that
used on the Apollo spacecraft, will be added. The completed heat shield is
scheduled to be ready for installation onto the Orion crew module at Kennedy
next summer.
To test the heat
shield during EFT-1's re-entry, Orion will travel more than 3,600 miles above
Earth's surface, 15 times farther than the International Space Station's
orbital position. This is farther than any spacecraft designed to carry humans
has gone in more than 40 years. Orion will return home at a speed almost 5,000
mph faster than any current human spacecraft.
Last week, engineers
at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., received materials
to begin manufacturing the adapter that will connect the Orion capsule to a
United Launch Alliance Delta IV heavy-lift rocket for EFT-1. Two forward and two
aft rings will be welded to barrel panels to form two adapters. This adapter
design will be tested during EFT-1 for use during the first launch of NASA's
next heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), in 2017. SLS will launch
NASA's Orion spacecraft and other payloads beyond low Earth orbit, providing an
entirely new capability for human exploration.
Data from the adapter
on the flight test will provide Marshall engineers with invaluable experience
developing hardware early in the design process. Designing the adapter once for
multiple flights also provides a cost savings.
Of the two adapters
welded at Marshall, one will attach Orion to the Delta IV heavy-lift rocket
used for EFT-1. The other adapter will be a structural test article to gain
knowledge on the design.
NASA's Ground Systems
Development and Operations (GSDO) Program also has passed a major agency review
that lays the groundwork at Kennedy to support future Orion and SLS launches.
The GSDO Program completed a combined system requirements review and system
definition review, in which an independent board of technical experts from
across NASA evaluated the program's infrastructure specifications, budget and
schedule. The board confirmed GSDO is ready to move from concept development to
preliminary design. The combination of the two assessments represents a
fundamentally different way of conducting NASA program reviews. The team is
streamlining processes to provide the nation with a safe, affordable and
sustainable launch facility.
The GSDO program last
week also led the third Stationary Recovery Test Working Group session in
Norfolk, Va. The team presented to the U.S. Navy detachment that will recover
the capsule during EFT-1 a complete list of tasks required to accomplish stationary
recovery test objectives. The working group outlined the plan for roles and
responsibilities to accomplish required test procedures. Included in these
presentations were the commanding officer of the USS Mesa Verde and the fleet
forces command director of operations, who both expressed complete support for
the test.