NASA conducted its first explosion test for the Orion spacecraft before the upcoming Artemis lunar missions.
Cameras captured the 11-foot capsule falling into the “hydroelectric impact basin,” a large water tank at the Langley Research Center’s landing and impact research plant in Hampton, Virginia.
However, the fall was not very long: the ship was only released from a height of about 18 inches.
NASA said the water impact tests are part of the engineers’ efforts to “simulate a number of landing scenarios as close as possible to real-world conditions.”
The first Artemis mission, scheduled for November 2021, will be an unmanned flight to the moon and back.
It will be followed by a manned Artemis II flight in 2023, which will take the same route, and then the lunar landing planned by Artemis III in 2024.
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NASA conducted the first of four planned splash tests of the Orion spacecraft to simulate its landing in water after returning from planned Artemis missions
Splash tests were initially conducted at Orion a few years ago, but since then structural improvements have been made to the ship’s crew module, based on a previous flight test and tunnel test data. of wind.
“Current tests use a new crew module configuration that represents the final design of the spacecraft,” NASA said after the crash test on Tuesday.
Tuesday’s dive was the first of four water tests planned at the facility during the following month.
They will help Orion meet the requirements of structural and design verification before Artemis II.
The 11-foot capsule was only dropped from a height of about 18 inches, but NASA said the test helps simulate landing scenarios “as close as possible to real-world conditions.” .
Orion (pictured) is designed to carry up to six crew members and can operate for up to 21 days without anchoring and up to six months anchored
“This is not so much about trying to reduce the uncertainty of the model and more about loading up to design limits, making the model higher in lift and more in load, not testing the requirements, but testing to the extremes,” he said NASA project engineer Chris Tarkenton in November. when the sinks were announced.
“The engineering design process is iterative, so as you learn more about how the structure behaves … [you] make updates to fix what you learn from the tests, “he added.
“And the design doesn’t just mean the overall shape, but how all the components will interact and how they’ll be manufactured.”
The first Artemis mission, currently linked to November 2021, will be an unmanned flight to and from the Moon. Artemis II, scheduled for 2023, will follow the same path, but with an astronaut crew
Orion is designed to carry up to six crew members and can operate for up to 21 days without anchoring and up to six months anchored.
NASA aims to launch its first Artemis lunar mission in November 2021.
Artemis II, scheduled for August 2023, will take the same path as his predecessor, but with a crew on board.
In 2024, six men and women will embark in Orion for the historic Artemis III mission, the first manned lunar landing since 1972.
In November, NASA detected an error with a component in one of Orion’s power data units, but indicated that it would not delay the launch of Artemis I. Pictured: Orion in orbit
The following year, the historic Artemis III mission will bring the next man and first woman to the surface of the Moon, the first manned lunar landing since 1972.
In November, NASA found an error with a component in one of the power data units of the Orion spacecraft, but the agency indicated it would not delay the release date of Artemis I.
Whenever you launch Orion, it will stick to the most powerful rocket ever assembled.
The 177-foot-tall twin boosters, equivalent to a 16-story building, will help propel astronauts to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years.
They are part of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), the first deep space rocket built for human travel since Saturn V, used in the Apollo program in the 1960s and 1970s.
These are the twin twins that will propel astronauts to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years.
The SLS will produce up to 8.8 million pounds of momentum, more than any other rocket in history, to accumulate enough power to blow up Orion from a low Earth orbit.
The first full hot fire test of the aluminum core of the SLS rocket took place last week.
Next month, the core will be placed in a huge barge called the Pegasus and will float 900 miles from NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
At launch, it will contain about half a million gallons of liquid hydrogen and 200,000 gallons of liquid oxygen to propel its crew and cargo out of Earth orbit.
Once the thickness of the rocket is broken, it will reach a top speed of 24,500 mph.
At a cost of $ 9.1 billion to develop, manufacture, and test, the SLS is the only rocket capable of sending Orion Moon, its astronauts, and supplies into a single mission.