NASA and industry engineers successfully tested the main parachute for Constellation Program rockets during a drop test Thursday at the U.S. Army's Yuma Proving Ground near Yuma, Ariz.
The parachute system will allow Ares I and Ares V first stage boosters to be recovered and reused. Thursday's test validated the results of an earlier test conducted in September.
"Measuring 150-feet in diameter and weighing 2,000 pounds, this is the biggest chute of its kind that's been tested," said Steve Cook, director of the Ares Projects Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "With each milestone, we bring ourselves one step closer to further exploring the moon."
Exploring the moon and beyond is the focus of the Constellation Program, which is developing a new family of U.S. launch vehicles, spacecraft and related systems for exploration.
Booster recovery was the focus of the recent test, the second in a series. Outfitted with a 42,000-pound weight to simulate the load of a rocket's first stage, the main parachute was dropped from a U.S. Air Force C-17 aircraft flying at an altitude of 16,500 feet. The 1-ton parachute and all supporting hardware functioned properly, landing safely approximately three minutes later on the Yuma Proving Ground test range.
During the first main parachute test on Sept. 25, the parachute was dropped from a slightly higher elevation of 17,500 feet, giving NASA engineers the opportunity to monitor parachute performance at a dynamic pressure of 86 pounds per square foot. After the drop's completion, engineers spent several weeks reviewing test data - measuring the parachute's peak loads at opening, determining the canopy expansion rate during the early phase of inflation and measuring the parachute's drag area as it drifted down to Earth.
The Ares first stage booster recovery system is derived from the system NASA uses to recover the space shuttle's solid rocket boosters after launch. The first stage booster for Ares I is similar to the space shuttle's solid rocket booster but has an added fifth segment of propellant, resulting in a heavier load.
The current parachute tests are necessary to allow for differences between the space shuttle's four-segment boosters and the Ares launch vehicles. Testing is scheduled to run through 2010.
ATK Launch Systems near Promontory, Utah, is the prime contractor for the first stage booster. ATK's subcontractor, United Space Alliance of Houston, is responsible for the design, development and testing of the parachutes at its facilities at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla.
The Constellation Program is managed out of NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, and the Ares Projects are managed out of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala. Yuma Proving Ground provides the test range, support facilities and equipment.
Image Credit: NASA/MSFC
Ares I Rocket Development One test objective was to demonstrate the thrust vector control system operation using only one of two hydraulic power units. The vector control, part of the flight control system, directs the thrust of the two solid rocket booster nozzles to control shuttle attitude and trajectory during liftoff and ascent.
Ares I Upper Stage, Boeing The contract type is cost-plus-award-fee and the period of performance is Sept. 1, 2007, through Dec. 31, 2016. The estimated contract value for design team support and the manufacture of the test units and six production flight units is $514.7 million. The selection resulted from a full and open competition.
Milestone for Ares I Vehicle This review is the first in a series of milestones that will occur before the actual flight hardware is built. Each major review provides more detailed requirements for the vehicle design to ensure the overall system can meet all NASA requirements for safe and reliable flight. The review process also identifies technical and management challenges, and addresses ways to reduce potential risks as the project goes forward.
Crew Module Mockup, Orion Dryden is using the mockup to develop and verify integration and installation procedures for things like avionics, instrumentation, and wire harness routing in advance of the arrival of the first abort flight test article, called "Boilerplate 1."
In the early 1900s, Edwin Hubble made the startling discovery that our Milky Way galaxy is not alone. It is just one of many galaxies, or "island universes," as Hubble dubbed them, swimming in the sea of space.
Now, a century later, NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer is helping piece together the evolution of these cosmic species. Since its launch in 2003, the mission has surveyed tens of thousands of galaxies in ultraviolet light across nine billion years of time. The results provide new, comprehensive evidence for the "nurture" theory of galaxy evolution, which holds that the galaxies first described by Hubble – the elegant spirals and blob-like ellipticals -- are evolutionarily linked.
Boeing [NYSE: BA] has completed a developmental heat shield for NASA's Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) that is designed to protect future astronauts from extreme heat during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere following lunar and low-Earth orbit missions.
NASA Ames Research Center last year awarded Boeing Advanced Systems a contract to deliver a Thermal Protection System (TPS) Manufacturing Demonstration Unit (MDU) for the Orion capsule as part of NASA's Constellation program to return humans to the moon and on to Mars.
Space shuttle Atlantis made an important step toward space on Saturday morning when engineers and technicians rolled the launch-ready stack to Launch Pad 39A. Atlantis is scheduled to stay at the pad for about three weeks undergoing final preparations for its mission STS-122 targeted to begin Dec. 6.
The mammoth crawler-transporter began moving the stack to the pad at 4:43 a.m. EST. The 3-mile trip took approximately six hours and was hard down at 11:51 a.m.
Bolted atop a mobile launch platform, space shuttle Atlantis began its move early Saturday morning to Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Technicians and engineers at Kennedy spent the past week putting the finishing touches on the spacecraft, its fuel tank and booster rockets in preparation for the rollout before launch. Liftoff is targeted for Dec. 6 on an 11-day mission to the International Space Station.