Cape to host critical test of Orion safety system

Florida Today

NASA is preparing for a dramatic, quarter-billion-dollar test of a system designed to save Orion astronauts’ lives during a launch emergency.

Targeted for April 2019, the test flight called Ascent Abort 2, or AA-2, will use a surplus missile stage to shoot a mock-up Orion capsule from state-run Launch Complex 46.

Artist rendering of motors firing to jettison the launch abort system from an Orion crew capsule mockup during NASA's Ascent Abort-2 test flight, targeting an April 2019 launch by a Peacekeeper booster stage from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 46.

Motors will yank the unmanned capsule from the booster at altitude, showing how astronauts could escape to safety if NASA’s giant Space Launch System rocket suffered catastrophic problems after blasting off from Kennedy Space Center.

More:Video: Orion at Kennedy Space Center

“This is their ejection seat,” said Don Reed, leader of Orion’s flight test management office at Johnson Space Center. “Crew safety is dependent on this thing performing, and so we want to do a demonstration in a flight environment to ensure we haven’t missed anything.”

Artist rendering of a Peacekeeper booster stage and Orion crew capsule mockup launching NASA's Ascent Abort-2 test flight from Launch Complex 46 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The unmanned, three-minute flight testing Orion's ability to escape from a failing Space Launch System rocket is targeted for April 2019.

The $256 million test was once planned a decade earlier under the Constellation program, which envisioned Orion crews launching on Ares I rockets.

Canceled in 2010, a new program placed the capsule atop the 322-foot SLS rocket for launches into orbit around the moon, and hopefully one day to Mars.

More:Video: Bolden excited about Orion's first test flight

Astronauts aren’t expected to fly until 2022 or 2023. But the launch abort system test is the last major flight test before Orion flies on the SLS for the first time, without a crew, no earlier than December 2019, according to NASA’s latest projections.

Artist rendering of a Peacekeeper booster stage and Orion crew capsule mockup at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 46. The 93-foot vehicle will test Orion's ability to escape from a failing rocket, a test flight called Ascent Abort-2 and targeted for April 2019.

Last month, NASA and Space Florida, the state's aerospace development body responsible for Launch Complex 46, formally signed an agreement giving NASA exclusive rights to the pad at the eastern tip of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The agreement followed a few months after the pad hosted its first launch in nearly two decades in August — the first flight of a Minotaur rocket from Florida.

The same type of first stage that sent the Minotaur IV bolting from the Space Coast — a decommissioned Peacekeeper SR-118 intercontinental ballistic missile stage — will catapult the test capsule skyward.

This booster will look short and stubby, resembling the Little Joe and Little Joe II rockets NASA launched to test Mercury and Apollo abort systems more than 50 years ago. The stage will be sheathed by a custom “aeroshell” more than doubling its girth to fit Orion's shape.

At 16-and-a-half feet in diameter, Orion crew modules are supersized versions of their Apollo predecessors, with more than twice the interior volume.

Here's how the AA-2 test will work:

Shortly after sunrise, the booster provided by Orbital ATK will ignite with a half-million pounds of thrust.

Fifty-one seconds later and 31,000 feet up, motors on the pointy abort tower topping the capsule will fire to pull it away from the rocket as it flies through the period of peak aerodynamic stress.

The abort motors will whisk the capsule to nearly 44,000 feet at speeds exceeding 1,000 mph – a wild ride that would subject astronauts to G-forces making them feel eight or nine times their weight on the ground.

“That all happens within about 15 seconds or so,” said Reed.

A final set of motors will fire to jettison the abort tower and free Orion to drop toward the water 12 miles offshore east of the Cape. On the way down, the crew capsule will eject a dozen data recorders — backups in case of any telemetry gaps — in pairs that two boats will chase down with GPS trackers.

The remainder of the flight will not mimic a real-life abort, hopefully. To cut costs, the test Orion will not deploy parachutes that would ease astronauts to a gentle splashdown.

Instead, having collected the essential data during the climb uphill, the capsule will plunge to an ocean impact at “terminal velocity,” never to be recovered.

Total flight duration: Less than three minutes.

“This abort is a very complex test with very complex environments, and there’s no way you can test this on the ground,” said Reed. “We want to do a flight demonstration to ensure that we understand how all these loads, how all these environments interact.”

Various modifications will be made to Launch Complex 46 to support the test, including new access platforms and the addition of 190-foot-tall lightning towers.

Completion of the AA-2 test will clear various KSC facilities for the flight version of Orion being readied for the unmanned test launch on SLS, called Exploration Mission-1, or EM-1.

That mission aims to send the capsule Orion into orbit around the moon, at least 13 years after NASA first awarded the Orion contract to Lockheed Martin. Astronauts should follow on EM-2.

"We’re really looking forward to being down there and doing this launch," said Reed.

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