ATK Booster Motor lashes Utah Desert Photo Credit/NASA TV
With a thunderous roar, the world’s most powerful solid rocket motor, developed by Alliant Techsystems Inc., as the first stage for NASA’s Ares 1 crew exploration vehicle, fired for two minutes Tuesday at a desert test facility in Promontory, Utah.
DM-2 was the second and perhaps the final test firing of the motor derived from the space shuttle’s shorter twin solid rocket boosters.
Tuesday’s firing featured 53 test objectives, including the introduction of a new cold weather O-ring seal. The new seal, designed for use in temperatures ranging from 40 degrees to 90 degrees Fahrenheit, eliminates the requirement for the heaters introduced to the seals between motor segments following the fatal 1986 shuttle Challenger accident.
“There is nothing better for an engineer than to see an amazing test like this,” Doug Cooke, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration, told a post test news briefing. “It’s spectacular to see all this harnessed energy, 3.6 million pounds of thrust. It’s just incredible.”
“We did get a chance to look at all the preliminary data,” added Alex Priskos, NASA’s Ares 1 project first stage manager. “And it looks excellent, the chamber pressures, the thrust pressures.”
In February, the White House announced the cancellation of NASA’s Constellation-back to the moon program, including the Orion crew exploration vehicle, the two-stage Ares 1 and the Ares V heavy lift, which was to feature a pair of the big ATK motors as the first stage.
In spite of the legislative uncertainty, there is currently funding for a DM-3 test under high temperature conditions. There are plans for a DM-4 as well as three qualification tests using production rather than prototype rocket motors at the ATK facility. However, all four are unfunded.
The administration spending plan would invest instead in the development of commercial space transportation systems for astronauts and postpone a final decision on a heavy lift rocket strategy until 2015. Astronauts would aim for a 2025 mission to an asteroid and a future Mars mission under President Obama’s strategy.
A House measure seeks to preserve much of Constellation. A Senate version of NASA’s 2011 spending plan calls for the development of an Orion-like capsule and a heavy lift rocket by the end of 2016.
The Ares 1 included a five-segment motor like the one test fired on Tuesday and a J2-X upper stage. The larger Ares V was to place a lunar lander and an Earth departure rocket stage in low Earth orbit for use by Orion astronauts launched on the Ares 1.
The four-segment version of the ATK motor debuted with the launching of the first space shuttle mission in 1981.
The first ground test of the five segment motor, the DM-1, was conducted in Promontory on Sept. 10, 2009.