NASA’s first completed Orion crew module sits atop its service module at the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Facility at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The crew and service module will be transferred together on Wednesday to another facility for fueling, before moving again for the installation of the launch abort system.
At that point, the spacecraft will be complete and ready to stack on top of the Delta IV Heavy rocket that will carry it into space on its first flight in December.
For that flight, Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1), Orion will travel 3,600 miles above the Earth, farther than any spacecraft built to carry people has traveled in more than 40 years, and return home at speeds of 20,000 miles per hour, while enduring temperatures near 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Image Credit: NASA
At the Operations and Checkout Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, the Orion crew module and heat shield are being moved into position for the mating operation. The heat shield will be tested on Orion's first flight in December, Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1), an uncrewed flight that will put to the test the spacecraft that will send astronauts to an asteroid and eventually Mars on future missions.
EFT-1 will launch an uncrewed Orion capsule 3,600 miles into space for a four-hour mission to test several of its most critical systems. After making two orbits, Orion will return to Earth at almost 20,000 miles per hour and endure temperatures near 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit, before its parachutes slow it down for a landing in the Pacific Ocean.
Mission Operations Director Paul Hill talks to the media as NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and Johnson Space Center Director Ellen Ochoa visit Mission Control in the newly renovated and historic White Flight Control Room, which will be used to support NASA’s Orion spacecraft. The mission patches that adorn the walls reflect the control room's previous use in the Space Shuttle Program. Orion is the exploration spacecraft designed to carry astronauts to destinations in deep space, including an asteroid and Mars. It will have emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during space travel and provide safe re-entry from deep space return velocities.
Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1), planned for December 2014, will be Orion's first mission. EFT-1 will send an uncrewed spacecraft 3,600 miles above the Earth for a two-orbit flight that will give engineers the chance to verify its design and test some of the systems most critical for the safety of the astronauts who will fly on it in the future. After traveling 15 times farther into space than the International Space Station, Orion will return to Earth at speeds near 20,000 mph, generating temperatures of up to 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit, before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. Image Credit: NASA
After a month of being poked, prodded and pressurized in ways that mimicked the stresses of spaceflight, NASA's Orion crew module successfully passed its static loads tests on Wednesday.
When Orion launches on Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1), which is targeted for September 2014, it will travel farther from Earth than any spacecraft built for humans in more than 40 years.
The spacecraft will fly about 3,600 miles above Earth's surface and return at speeds of approximately 25,000 mph.
During the test, Orion will experience an array of stresses, or loads, including launch and reentry, the vacuum of space, and several dynamic events that will jettison hardware away from the spacecraft and deploy parachutes.
To ensure Orion will be ready for its flight test next year, engineers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida built a 20-foot-tall static loads test fixture for the crew module with hydraulic cylinders that slowly push or pull on the vehicle, depending on the type of load being simulated.
The fixture produced 110 percent of the load caused by eight different types of stress Orion will experience during EFT-1.
More than 1,600 strain gauges recorded how the vehicle responded. The loads ranged from as little as 14,000 pounds to as much as 240,000 pounds.
"The static loads campaign is our best method of testing to verify what works on paper will work in space," said Charlie Lundquist, NASA's Orion crew and service module manager at the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "This is how we validate our design."
In addition to the various loads it sustained, the Orion crew module also was pressurized to simulate the effect of the vacuum in space.
This simulation allowed engineers to confirm it would hold its pressurization in a vacuum and verify repairs made to superficial cracks in the vehicle's rear bulkhead caused by previous pressure testing in November.
The November test revealed insufficient margin in an area of the bulkhead that was unable to withstand the stress of pressurization.
Armed with data from that test, engineers were able to reinforce the design to ensure structural integrity and validate the fix during this week's test.
To repair the cracks, engineers designed brackets that spread the stress of being pressurized to other areas of the module that are structurally stronger.
During these tests Orion was successfully pressurized to 110 percent of what it would experience in space, demonstrating it is capable of performing as necessary during EFT-1.
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