NASA fired the Launch Abort System for the Orion crew exploration vehicle in a successful test early Thursday, sending an unmanned capsule test article streaking to an altitude of 6,919 feet above the White Sands Missile Range, N.M. Parachutes deployed to slow the descent of the capsule to a landing on the desert test range.
The capsule and abort system lifted off at 8 a.m., CDT, initiating the 95 second test flight.
“It looks to be flawless from my view,” said Doug Cooke, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration systems.
“Beautiful flight,” said Jay Estes, deputy manager of NASA’s Orion flight test office at the Johnson Space Center, where the abort motor and Orion capsule are under development as part of the Constellation Program. “That worked like clockwork.”
Though Constellation is facing cancellation, NASA engineers are moving ahead this year with long standing engineering activities, including the development of the Launch Abort System that under went its first fully configured flight test on Thursday.
The abort system, which NASA initiated as part of a goal to make Orion and its Ares 1 rocket launcher 10 times safer for astronauts than the space shuttle, could survive Constellation’s cancellation. The space agency could make the escape system available to the commercial crew transportation services favored by the Obama White House or for a follow-on government spacecraft.
In a mid-April speech, Obama announced that NASA will continue efforts to develop a version of Orion that could serve as a life boat for the International Space Station. A lighter version of the spacecraft — that was once intended to transport astronauts to the moon as well as the space station — would be launched un-manned, presumably without the need for the abort system.
During Thursday’s test, a mock Orion capsule lifted off under the 500,000 pound thrust solid rocket motor, reaching a vertical velocity of 600 miles per hour within 2.5 seconds. After reaching a peak altitude estimated at 6,919 feet, the spacecraft maneuvered around for the jettison of the towering abort motor.
A succession of pilot, drogue and finally three main parachutes deployed to lower the test capsule to a landing, with an impact velocity of about 20 to 25 miles per hour.
The abort system’s most complex feature is the attitude control system at the top of the jettison motor. The control system relies on eight valves releasing thrust in response to the capsule’s guidance system to stabilize the spacecraft as it goes transonic and experiences peak atmospheric dynamic pressure.
The results of Thursday’s test will under go a lengthy NASA evaluation, while Congress debates the Obama administration’s space policy agenda. The president has proposed a $6 billion increase in NASA funding over the next five years to develop a commercial rather than a government transportation system to carry astronauts as well as cargo to the space station, following the shuttle’s retirement later this year.
Seven hundred different measures were made during the brief flight.
On April 15, the president directed the space agency to re-focus other spending on technologies that could take astronauts to an asteroid by 2025, rather than to Constellation’s destination, the moon.