NASA may do Apollo 8-like test
Luca Cernuschi
Issue date: 2/6/07 Section: Space Technology
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As an initial part of its Constellation Project, NASA is considering merging its two future rockets to test the performance of its capsule in a cosmic environment. This might include a manned lunar mission like Apollo 8 , which flew in 1968, that would orbit but not land on the moon's surface.
The Ares 1 upper stage will be merged with the main stage of the Ares 5 heavy launcher, both latest-generation launch vehicles part of the Constellation Project - NASA's space exploration program effective as of Aug. 26 - which will include the exploration and possibly colonization of the moon.
The Orion Spacecraft, previously known as the Crew Exploration Vehicle, should be launched in 2015 aboard this hybrid rocket towards the moon, so as to study its performance in lunar orbit and in the space environment long before the first actual lunar landings are scheduled to occur. The mission would be similar to man's first ever trip to the moon in Dec. 1968. Apollo 8 orbited the moon without a lunar lander and returned to Earth several hours later. Sending the spacecraft all the way to the moon would grant the experiment a much higher level of realism, and "you could have the capsule re-enter at lunar velocities," Scott Horowitz, NASA's associate administrator for exploration system and a former astronaut, told Space.com.
The Orion will also be tested in a skip-entry technique to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere. Generally, spacecraft enter on direct approach to the Earth and just pass through the atmosphere.
The goal of this new technique is to make the spacecraft "bounce" off the atmosphere before entering it, if desired. The Apollo lunar capsules returned on direct approach, which meant that, since they could only land in pre-defined locations on the Earth's surface, they had to launch from the moon within certain launch windows, greatly limiting the mission's flexibility. Seeing how NASA would prefer it if the Orion always landed in the same spot, this technique would greatly benefit the program.
Skip entry, though, is not without problems. According to Horowitz, it "creates interesting technical challenges to the thermal protection system as well as control and guidance" for the craft.
Indeed, NASA will be using a replaceable thermal shield for Orion, and bouncing off the atmosphere creates mysterious stresses to date not fully understood, requiring further considerations in the design of the shield and, possibly, over-construction. This test will allow engineers to recover the shield after re-entry and examine it, perhaps partially explaining these stresses and tailoring to them appropriately.
The hybrid rocket, along with other possibilities for high-speed skip-entry tests of Orion, are being studied at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
The Ares 1 upper stage will be merged with the main stage of the Ares 5 heavy launcher, both latest-generation launch vehicles part of the Constellation Project - NASA's space exploration program effective as of Aug. 26 - which will include the exploration and possibly colonization of the moon.
The Orion Spacecraft, previously known as the Crew Exploration Vehicle, should be launched in 2015 aboard this hybrid rocket towards the moon, so as to study its performance in lunar orbit and in the space environment long before the first actual lunar landings are scheduled to occur. The mission would be similar to man's first ever trip to the moon in Dec. 1968. Apollo 8 orbited the moon without a lunar lander and returned to Earth several hours later. Sending the spacecraft all the way to the moon would grant the experiment a much higher level of realism, and "you could have the capsule re-enter at lunar velocities," Scott Horowitz, NASA's associate administrator for exploration system and a former astronaut, told Space.com.
The Orion will also be tested in a skip-entry technique to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere. Generally, spacecraft enter on direct approach to the Earth and just pass through the atmosphere.
The goal of this new technique is to make the spacecraft "bounce" off the atmosphere before entering it, if desired. The Apollo lunar capsules returned on direct approach, which meant that, since they could only land in pre-defined locations on the Earth's surface, they had to launch from the moon within certain launch windows, greatly limiting the mission's flexibility. Seeing how NASA would prefer it if the Orion always landed in the same spot, this technique would greatly benefit the program.
Skip entry, though, is not without problems. According to Horowitz, it "creates interesting technical challenges to the thermal protection system as well as control and guidance" for the craft.
Indeed, NASA will be using a replaceable thermal shield for Orion, and bouncing off the atmosphere creates mysterious stresses to date not fully understood, requiring further considerations in the design of the shield and, possibly, over-construction. This test will allow engineers to recover the shield after re-entry and examine it, perhaps partially explaining these stresses and tailoring to them appropriately.
The hybrid rocket, along with other possibilities for high-speed skip-entry tests of Orion, are being studied at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
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