SANDUSKY, Ohio– Rocket scientists were proud to show off the service module for the Orion Spacecraft at a news conference Monday afternoon.
Built by the European Space Agency, the module is in pieces and ready to be put through a series of important tests.
It’s a milestone as mankind tries to go one step farther into space: a mission to Mars.
“What does it mean, this cooperation with ESA? This is the first time ESA is embarking on a mission beyond lower Earth orbit,” said European Space Agency Development Director Nico Dettmann.
But before it can get even beyond the moon, the Orion has to go through Ohio and NASA Glenn.
It is the job of scientists and engineers at the Plum Brook Space Power Facility near Sandusky to take this highly engineered, precision-made service module and all of its parts to see if they can shake it apart, freeze it, fry it, or blow its doors off with sound.
And in the test chambers of Plum Brook they do every one of those things.
There is no other test facility like this in the world.
“When you build a spacecraft structure, you have to build it strong enough. You have all these stresses shaking the vehicle, so think of standing on your lawnmower while you’re on it- how it’s vibrating- you and all the sound pressure coming at you. Those two tests are done here,” said NASA Glenn director Jim Free.
One of the most advanced places is the space test chamber. The module will be put inside and two, five million pound doors will close.
The doors need to be that heavy so massive pumps can remove the air and lower the pressure to space-like conditions; some of the harshest condition known to humans.
“Lots of strange things happen in space where there’s no air,” testing supervisor Gerald Carek said. “You have thermal conditions that can get extremely hot- several hundred degrees above zero- from solar radiation to several hundred below zero just from the deep cold of space.”
And don’t forget the shake tests.
Some of the biggest and most powerful hydraulic motors and springs made will shake the service module at pressures equal to that of launching it on a rocket.
This is the only facility in the world that can do such a battery of exhausting tests.
And all the scientists and engineers at the facility know that their work has to be exact and specific, because the success of any trip to Mars has to start here in Ohio.
“This testing and this hardware is the next vehicle that’s going to take us beyond human history as we know it today,” Free said.
The module will be tested for more than a year at Plum Brook.
What engineers and scientists find will eventually be incorporated into the final Orion Spacecraft that’s could lift off to go to Mars and back by 2020.
