Rick Thompson at NASA Langley Research Center has worked for years to help develop the sophisticated Orion crew capsule meant to carry American astronauts back into space from U.S. soil.
The crew vehicle is scheduled to launch at last early Thursday from Cape Canaveral, Fla., aboard a heavy-lift Delta IV rocket on its inaugural, shakedown mission.
When it does, it will carry the hopes and dreams of the post-Apollo generation and cutting-edge technology. Thompson joked it will also carry a lone crew member — a plush red Muppet.
“I got pretty excited when I saw Elmo was onboard,” Thompson said Monday.
Tickle Me Elmo won’t actually be aboard the Orion, although the Sesame Street character does have a special NASA “boarding pass” for the trip.
Thompson works in aerothermal dynamics, and he and other NASA Langley engineers in Hampton who played key roles in getting the Orion ready for show time spoke with reporters Monday about the upcoming test flight.
America’s vaunted deep-space ambitions — a crewed mission in the 2020s to redirect and retrieve an asteroid, and another mission in the 2030s to send humans to Mars — hinge on getting this technology right.
And much depends on a successful test flight. The capsule is set to launch at 7:05 a.m. Thursday and splash down in the Pacific Ocean about 4 1/2 hours later. Much could happen in the interim.
“What we do is very dangerous,” said Kevin Rivers, project manager of the new launch abort system, or LAS, that sits atop the Orion. That system is designed to carry a crew to safety should a launch go wrong. It would activate automatically in milliseconds in a catastrophic launch event, such as when the unmanned Antares rocket exploded seconds after liftoff in October from NASA Wallops on the Eastern Shore.
“The level of energy that we deal with in a launch system is phenomenal,” River said. “So any time you do this, we know that there are risks. That we could fail. But we’ve looked very carefully at our launch system and our spacecraft and we feel very confident that it’s going to do what it’s commanded to do and that we’re going to have a great day.”
Many NASA centers have had a hand in developing the Orion. NASA Langley led the LAS development, conducted countless wind tunnel and impact tests, helped the U.S. Navy hone sea-based spacecraft recovery techniques and helped Lockheed Martin validate the strength and integrity of the heat shield that must withstand temperatures of 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit upon re-entry.
“Every team has contributed to the safety of the Orion space capsule in its own way,” said NASA Langley spokeswoman Kathy Barnstorff.
The space agency hopes the test mission will spark the enthusiasm of the general public.
On Wednesday, the center is hosting a NASA Social for participants to tour the facility, meet researchers and use various social media platforms to Tweet, blog or post about their experiences. The social is invitation-only, but the public can participate by following on Twitter using #Orion, #NASASocial, #NASA and @NASALangley. NASA TV will also broadcast a social media briefing from 1 to 3 p.m. that day.
And on Thursday, the NASA-affiliated Virginia Air & Space Center in downtown Hampton will open its IMAX theater at 6:15 a.m. so the public can view the Orion launch and splash-down for free on a huge screen.
“My hope is that, when we fly successfully on Thursday, that it will energize the public,” said Thompson, “and energize that middle-schooler that isn’t quite sure what he wants to do, but he likes math and science. And he’ll follow along and go into engineering and come to work at NASA. That happened to me. I was 10 years old when I watched Apollo fly to the moon, and carried that dream … with me all these years.”
According to NASA, the Orion will be packed with sensors to record and measure every second of its flight. Shortly after lift-off it’ll jettison its launch abort system to demonstrate that ability, then lap once around the planet at 17,000 mph.
Once that’s done, it’ll fire its upper-stage rockets to begin its “big climb” — 3,600 miles above Earth, 15 times higher than the International Space Station, higher than a crew vehicle has traveled since the Apollo missions 40 years ago.
Then it’ll head home again.
The Orion will fire its jets to position itself for re-entry, plummeting through the atmosphere at a blistering 20,000 mph, enveloped in a field of superheated plasma twice as hot as lava. This is where the heat shield will undergo its literal crucible.
Once the capsule is safely through, a series of parachutes will deploy, slowing it down to 300 mph, then 175 mph and, finally, 20 mph for an easy splashdown fit for an actual crew.
The heat shield will be removed from the capsule and shipped to NASA Langley, where it will be integrated into a model for even more splash-down tests in 2016, said Richard Boitnott, lead test engineer.
In 2017, NASA plans to send another unmanned Orion on a mission to orbit the moon, this time boosted by the supersized Space Launch System rocket being built especially for deep-space manned missions.
If all goes well, the Orion and the SLS could carry their first humans into space as early as 2019.
“It’s about exploration,” Boitnott said. “I just hope I live long enough to see us land on Mars.”
Dietrich can be reached by phone at 757-247-7892.
