ESA Expresses Interest in NASA Facility To Test Ariane 5 Upgrade

The NASA Plum Brook facility's B-2 test chamber — used in 1998 for propulsion testing of a Delta 3 upper stage. Credit: NASA photo  

The European Space Agency (ESA) is considering paying a multimillion-dollar repair bill for NASA’s B-2 Spacecraft Propulsion Research Facility in Sandusky, Ohio, so that the upper stage for the possible successor to Europe’s Ariane 5 rocket can be tested there.

The B-2 Spacecraft Propulsion Research Facility is part of Plum Brook Station, a campus about 80 kilometers west of NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.

ESA wants to use the facility to test the upper stage for its Ariane 5 Midlife Evolution (ME) rocket, one of two options Europe is considering for its next satellite launcher.

However, the B-2 building needs to have its steam ejection system fixed so it can simulate high-altitude conditions needed for the ESA test.

“We have to refurbish those,” Jim Free, deputy director for the NASA Glenn Research Center, said of the steam ejectors. “That’s where the majority of the upgrades, or the refurbishment of the facility comes in. It would be ESA paying for the upgrade, in addition to the test cost.”

Free would not provide a specific figure, but he said the overhaul would cost several million dollars. Plum Brook’s budget for 2012 is $11.2 million, and facility upkeep runs about $5 million a year, NASA spokesman Michael Braukus said.

Maintaining the upgrades paid for by ESA would not be a budgetary issue for NASA “because there is no anticipated customer beyond the ESA test,” Braukus said.

A draft Space Act Agreement containing some of the terms and conditions of ESA’s use of the Plum Brook facility “has been forwarded to ESA for review,” Braukus told Space News April 3.

Final terms and conditions are still under negotiation, but NASA expects European space officials to make a decision about the test this fall.

NASA has completed development cost estimates for the Plum Brook upgrades and is scheduled to conduct a formal review April 11, he added. Those results will be forwarded to ESA.

Pal Hvistendahl, an ESA spokesman in Paris, confirmed the agency is interested in using Plum Brook’s B-2 facility to test a fully integrated upper stage for the proposed Ariane 5-ME rocket, if the agency decides to go that route.

He also said that ESA’s “present baseline foresees development of a new test bench” at a liquid rocket engine test site operated by the German Aerospace Center, DLR, in Lampoldshausen, Germany.

“The testing at Plum Brook B-2 might come as a complement or as an alternative to this baseline,” Hvistendahl said.