Credit: Barbara David
Within 97 seconds of an initial 500,000-pound blast of solid rocket motor thrust, Orion completed its first successful flight test of the launch abort system at the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range near Las Cruces, New Mexico at 7 a.m. local time.
“It just looked great,” said Doug Cooke, NASA Associate Administrator for the Office of Exploration Systems Mission directorate. “This was a tremendous team effort all the way ‘round,” he said during a post-test briefing.
Outstanding performance
“We’ve been working well over four years to bring this together,” said Donald Reed, Manager of the Orion Flight Test Office at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. “I’m very proud of this team. We all came together…to get to this point and make this possible today. It’s a great day for the country, for NASA and for industry.”
Reed said from his vantage point in the control van, “we didn’t see anything anomalous. Everything worked as expected. We actually touched down with significantly less velocity than we had predicted. The performance was just absolutely outstanding.”
As onlookers waited for the test, wind’s picked up at the viewing site – adding a nervous tension that perhaps the flight might be delayed. “But the weather gods were with us today,” added Reed.
Flawless job
The Orion Pad Abort-1 test hardware roared to life, flying a pre-set trajectory and accomplishing its air ballet of maneuvers, including successful deployment of three main parachutes. The flight hardware test from start to touchdown lasted one minute 35 seconds.
“The team did such a flawless job today,” said Mark Geyer, Manager of the Orion Project Office at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. “It worked great. So it’s a huge step for us.”
The 55.5-ft-tall launch abort vehicle and crew module mock-up roared skyward off the pad, reaching a speed of about 445 mph in three seconds. More than 690 measurements were taken real-time during the test, providing data only gained through early test flights.
“It was an impressive launch,” said Cleon Lacefield, Lockheed Martin vice president and Orion program manager. Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor to NASA for the Orion crew exploration vehicle
“This test validated the amazing performance capability of Orion’s launch abort system. The entire industry team did an excellent job designing, building and integrating this extremely complex system,” Lacefield said.
By Leonard David