NASASpaceFlight.com Forum
SLS / Orion / Beyond-LEO HSF - Constellation => Orion and Exploration Vehicles => Topic started by: woods170 on 02/19/2015 01:19 pm
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First tangible results of EFT-1:
- heatshield re-do being pushed
- Material of uprighting bags is suspected in their failure, not the associated plumbing and pressurization system
- Van Allen radiation belt had very little impact on on-board electronics
http://spacenews.com/lockheed-martin-pressing-to-simplify-orion-heat-shield/ (http://spacenews.com/lockheed-martin-pressing-to-simplify-orion-heat-shield/)
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The specific quote from the article about the heat shield: (http://spacenews.com/lockheed-martin-pressing-to-simplify-orion-heat-shield)
That data supports a Lockheed Martin proposal to scrap the current heat-shield design, which features a 5-meter-diameter honeycombed frame, in favor of an alternative composed of rectangular heat-resistant tiles glued together with a silicone-based adhesive, Hawes said.
Such a change, Hawes said, could shave hours — and therefore dollars — off the heat shield manufacturing process currently employed by subcontractor Textron, which is based in Boston.
“That’s one of our bigger concerns with the heat shield, just the long-term manufacturing. [We want] something that would be less touch-intensive,” said Hawes, who joined Lockheed in 2011 after a 30-year NASA career.
The current process requires Textron technicians to inject insulating material into thumbnail-wide holes in the honeycombed frame using a caulking gun, Hawes said. The shield must then be cured in an oven and sanded down, an arduous and time-consuming process.
Replacing the honeycomb structure with plates that can be glued together with a silicone sealant that bonds at room temperature would be easier, cheaper and no less safe, Hawes said.
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As well: 600 GB of data collected. A part made with additive manufacturing (3D printing) performed well, hoping to do more parts this way in the future. Cabin pressure & temp were in range.
They're also hoping to have next Orion capsule to KSC by the end of the year.
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"NASA’s Orion Flight Test Yields Critical Data as Engineers Improve Spacecraft for Next Mission"
http://www.nasa.gov/content/nasa-s-orion-flight-test-yields-critical-data-as-engineers-improve-spacecraft-for-next/
“The heat shield looks in great shape,” said Michael Hawes, Orion Program manager for Lockheed Martin, NASA’s prime contractor for the spacecraft.
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I've noticed an official EFT-1 video compilation up on NASA's Vimeo channel. Some nice views presented in HD, and some interesting repeats of the LAS jettison.
https://vimeo.com/118272299
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Engineers continue examining Orion spacecraft and flight test data
Posted on February 27, 2015 at 5:34 pm by Rachel Kraft
Engineers across the country have been busy taking a closer look at Orion and the data it produced during its successful flight test in December. At NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, technicians removed the spacecraft’s back shell and heat shield, which protected Orion as it reentered Earth’s atmosphere at searing temperatures. Removing the back shell allows the team to get a closer look at Orion’s systems to see how they fared during the trip to space.
The heat shield was removed in preparation for shipment to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, where special equipment will be used to remove its ablative material. From there, the heat shield will be shipped to NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, where it will be outfitted on a test article for water impact testing. Meanwhile, NASA and Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor for Orion, continue to take a look at the data the flight test produced to validate pre-flight models and improve the spacecraft’s design. A 90-day report examining the flight will be delivered to NASA by Lockheed Martin in early March.
https://blogs.nasa.gov/orion/2015/02/27/engineers-continue-examining-orion-spacecraft-and-flight-test-data/ (https://blogs.nasa.gov/orion/2015/02/27/engineers-continue-examining-orion-spacecraft-and-flight-test-data/)
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Orion Launch Abort System Motor Test
Published on Mar 5, 2015
On March 4, Orbital ATK, in collaboration with NASA and Lockheed Martin, completed its latest test of Orion’s Launch Abort System attitude control motor, proving that the motor could withstand 40 percent beyond the maximum expected environments of an abort emergency.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBxud6KGcxE
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Heat Shield for NASA’s Orion Continues Post-Flight Journey by Land
March 10, 2015
The heat shield for NASA’s Orion spacecraft that successfully survived a high-velocity re-entry during its December 2014 flight test, is continuing its journey, now at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The heat shield arrived March 9 at Marshall, where experts from the Center and NASA’s Ames Research Center will extract samples of the ablative material, or Avcoat.
The heat shield was offloaded and transferred to a large support structure to allow to the engineers to conduct their work. The samples will be used to help measure the char layers and degree of erosion or ablation. They’ll also extract the various instruments in the heat shield to assess their performance.
“Marshall was asked to aid in this effort because of our experience in dealing with large structures and fixtures that can accommodate a 13-foot in diameter heat shield,” said Larry Gagliano, Marshall’s deputy project manager for the Orion Launch Abort System. “The support fixture can rotate in a vertical or horizontal position to allow for core sample removal and close up imaging of the heat shield.”
After the analysis is complete, the heat shield will be loaded into the 7-axis milling and machining center, for removal of the remaining Avcoat material and then will be shipped to NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, for water impact testing.
Heat Shield Technology
The heat shield consist of a fiberglass-phenolic honeycomb structure that fits over Orion’s titanium skeleton and carbon-fiber skin. Each of the 320,000 cells is filled with an ablative material that provides some insulation and consumes heat energy by chemical decomposition and gas release.
“Our team put a lot of hard work into Orion’s first test flight and it’s exciting to see how well the heat shield performed,” said Terry Abel, project manager at Lockheed Martin in Huntsville. “We look at this task as a large part of Orion’s success – the heat shield has to perform well and it’s our job to see if we can improve upon Orion’s first flight.”
Orion’s heat shield experienced much higher heating levels and temperatures than that of the space shuttle tile systems. The heating was higher because Orion returned from a farther distance than the space shuttle ever experienced, resulting in a faster and hotter re-entry.
For the first test flight of Orion, the Avcoat surface reached temperatures of about 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Instrumentation in the Avcoat and back shell tiles measured the rise of the surface and internal temperatures during re-entry as well as heating levels and pressures. Additional instrumentation in the Avcoat recorded how the surface recedes as it consumes heat energy.
Avcoat is designed to burn away, or ablate, as the material heats up, rather than transfer the heat back into the crew module. At its thickest, the heat shield is 1.6 inches thick. Roughly 20 percent of the Avcoat eroded as Orion traveled through Earth’s atmosphere.
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/news/releases/2015/heat-shield-for-nasas-orion-continues-post-flight-journey-by-land.html (http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/news/releases/2015/heat-shield-for-nasas-orion-continues-post-flight-journey-by-land.html)
Photo Captions:
Top: The heat shield arrived March 9 at Marshall, where experts from the Center and NASA’s Ames Research Center will extract samples of the ablative material, or Avcoat.
Bottom: During Orion's test flight the heat shield reached temperatures of about 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Instrumentation in the heat shield measured the rise of the surface and internal temperatures during re-entry as well as heating levels and pressures.
Both Images Credit: NASA/MSFC/Emmett Given
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The Orion heat shield ground test article, enclosed in a carrier, arrives at the Shuttle Landing Facility atop a flatbed truck from the Space Station Processing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The carrier will be loaded into NASA's Guppy aircraft for transportation to Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company near Denver, Colorado. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett
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NASA’s Orion: First Flight Test
Published on Apr 27, 2015
ReelNASA
NASA’s Orion spacecraft successfully completed its first trip to space in December 2014. The flight tested many of Orion’s systems critical to safety before it begins carrying astronauts to deep space destinations, including to an asteroid and on toward Mars.
https://youtu.be/YEjH4K6F5Co
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Orion Windows Undergoing Inspection at Kennedy Space Center
Editor: Nancy Bray - May 27, 2015
Inside the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building high bay at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, technicians have removed a side thermal window from one of Orion's tile panels. The tile panels with thermal windows intact were removed from Orion in the Launch Abort System Facility after the spacecraft returned to Kennedy in late December. All of the windows are being removed and disassembled for post-flight inspection for any signs of micrometeoroid or orbital debris impacts or other potential glass damage. Orion launched aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket on Exploration Flight Test-1 on Dec. 5, 2014. After a two-orbit, 4.5 hour mission, Orion splashed down in the Pacific Ocean and was retrieved by NASA, Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Navy. The spacecraft was secured in the well deck of the USS Anchorage and brought to Naval Base San Diego, where it was offloaded, secured in a container and transported back to Kennedy for analysis. Orion will next launch atop the agency's Space Launch System rocket. The spacecraft will help enable missions to an asteroid and on toward Mars. For more information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/orion (http://www.nasa.gov/orion)
Photo credit: NASA/Dimitri Gerondidakis
http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/orion-windows-undergoing-inspection-at-kennedy-space-center (http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/orion-windows-undergoing-inspection-at-kennedy-space-center)
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NASA Team at Marshall Removes Charred Orion Heat Shield Surface
Published on May 28, 2015
In this time-lapse video, captured in NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center Building 4705 from March 24 to May 15, NASA and Lockheed Martin workers remove burnt ablative material -- or the incinerated outer surface -- from the Orion heat shield. The shield was charred during Orion's successful flight test in late 2014. The team, led by thermal protection engineers from NASA's Ames Research Center, used Marshall's innovative, seven-axis milling machine in Building 4705 to cut away large sections of the ablative material, known as Avcoat. The remaining 180 or so Avcoat squares, many covering sophisticated sensors, were removed by hand for delivery to Ames and other NASA facilities. In early June, the stripped heat shield will travel to NASA's Langley Research Center for water-impact testing, while analysis of the ablated material and sensor data will continue until late 2015 -- aiding development of the next Orion flight test vehicle. Orion will launch atop the Space Launch System, the nation's heavy-lift rocket now in development. Learn more about Orion at http://www.nasa.gov/exploration. (MSFC/Emmett Given & Dawn Lyons)
https://youtu.be/FR8QFYAakec
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Mike Hawes Op-ed: Three Things Orion’s First Flight Taught Us
http://spacenews.com/op-ed-three-things-orions-first-flight-taught-us/ (http://spacenews.com/op-ed-three-things-orions-first-flight-taught-us/)
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Flown Orion Prepared for Move
Inside the Launch Abort System Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, workers are preparing the Orion spacecraft that flew on Exploration Flight Test-1 in 2014 for transport to Orion prime contractor Lockheed Martin's facility in Denver, where it will undergo direct field acoustic testing. This is a technique used for acoustic testing of aerospace structures by subjecting them to sound waves created by an array of acoustic drivers. For the test, several electro-dynamic speakers will be arranged around Orion to provide a uniform, well-controlled, direct sound field test at the surface of the spacecraft. Orion will next launch atop NASA’s Space Launch System rocket on Exploration Mission-1.
Photo credit: NASA/Kennedy
http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/flown-orion-prepared-for-move
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Orion Arrives in Colorado
http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/news/press-releases/2015/september/space-orion-denver.html
The Orion crew module flown 3,600 miles into space during Exploration Flight Test-1 has arrived to the Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company headquarters in Littleton, Colorado.
While in Colorado, engineers will perform final decontamination on the crew module, will continue post-flight analysis of select components, and will evaluate a new acoustic technology called Direct Field Acoustic (DFA) testing. The evaluation of DFA testing will determine if the method can produce enough energy to simulate the acoustic loads Orion will experience during launch and ascent on the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.
Test highlights:
Customized, high-energy speakers use a specific algorithm to control how much energy reaches the vehicle.
The speakers will be configured in a circle around the vehicle.
The amount of speakers needed for the test will fill up three tractor-trailers.
The testing is expected to conclude in early 2016.
If the method proves to be an accurate representation of SLS 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.
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Just curious if there is some kind of image or diagram that shows the trajectory that Orion took into the Van Allen Belts? I have looked but I'm not coming up with anything. Something similar to either one of these links used for Apollo would be great:
http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/earth/3Page7.pdf
http://www.popsci.com/blog-network/vintage-space/apollo-rocketed-through-van-allen-belts
Thanks!
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Look who showed up back at KSC.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BTGJ9U5lHe7/
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Orion at White House for Made in America Product Showcase
NASA's Orion spacecraft that flew on Exploration Flight Test-1 on Dec. 5, 2014, is seen on the south lawn of the White House during a Made in America Product Showcase, Monday, July 23, 2018 in Washington. Lockheed Martin, NASA’s prime contractor for Orion, began manufacturing the Orion crew module in 2011 and delivered it in July 2012 to NASA's Kennedy Space Center where final assembly, integration and testing was completed. More than 1,000 companies across the country manufactured or contributed elements to the spacecraft.
Photo Credit: (NASA/Aubrey Gemignani)
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Better late then never, here some photos I took of the EFT-1 capsule at KSC VC on April 15, 2017
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February 2018