Space Launch System (SLS) Core Stage 101

NASA Weighs, Balances Orion for Ascent Abort Test

Researchers conducted mass property testing of the Orion crew module for the Ascent Abort Test-2 Friday, Feb. 16, at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The crew module, built at Langley, was lifted and rotated on its side to determine its weight and center of gravity, known as balance. To get accurate results during the uncrewed flight test planned for April 2019 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, this simplified crew module needs to have the same outer shape and approximate mass distribution of the Orion crew module that astronauts will fly in on future missions to deep space. The markings on the sides and bottom of the capsule used for the test will allow cameras to follow the spacecraft’s trajectory as well as the orientation of the spacecraft relative to the direction of travel for data collection.

Next, it will be shipped to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston where engineers will outfit it with the avionics, power, software, instrumentation and other elements needed to execute the flight test. This test will help ensure Orion’s launch abort system can carry astronauts to safety in the event of an emergency with its rocket during launch.

Image Credit: NASA/David C. Bowman

Video: Orion Swing Drop at NASA Langley Research Center

A test version of the Orion spacecraft is pulled back like a pendulum and released, taking a dive into the 20-foot-deep Hydro Impact Basin at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. Crash-test dummies wearing modified Advanced Crew Escape Suits are securely seated inside the capsule to help engineers understand how splashdown in the ocean during return from a deep-space mission could impact the crew and seats. Each test in the water-impact series simulates different scenarios for Orion’s parachute-assisted landings, wind conditions, velocities and wave heights the spacecraft and crew may experience when landing in the ocean upon return missions in support of the journey to Mars. 

Power of Pink Provides NASA with Pressure Pictures

They say you show your true colors when you’re under pressure.

Turns out the old saying works for models being tested in wind tunnels as well, specifically those coated with a unique Pressure-Sensitive Paint (PSP) that NASA engineers have used for more than 25 years.

Read more: https://www.nasa.gov/aero/power-of-pink-provides-nasa-with-pressure-pictures

Nebula Images: http://nebulaimages.com/

Astronomy articles: http://astronomyisawesome.com/

Landing and Impact Research Facility

From enabling astronauts to practice moon landings to aircraft crash testing to drop tests for Orion, NASA's gantry has come full circle.

The gantry, a 240-foot high, 400-foot-long, 265-foot-wide A-frame steel structure located at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., was built in 1963 and was used to model lunar gravity. Originally named the Lunar Landing Research Facility (LLRF), the gantry became operational in 1965 and allowed astronauts like Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin to train for Apollo 11's final 150 feet before landing on the moon.

Because the moon's gravity is only 1/6 as strong as Earth's, the gantry had a suspension system that supported 5/6 of the total weight of the Lunar Excursion Module Simulator (LEMS), the device the astronauts used to perform the tests. This supportive suspension system imitated the moon's gravitational environment. Additionally, many of the tests were conducted at night to recreate lighting conditions on the moon.

Neil Armstrong with the LEMS at the Lunar Landing Research Facility. This picture (below) was taken in February 1969 - just five months before Armstrong would become the first person to set foot on the surface of the moon.

Aircraft Crash Test Research

After the Apollo program concluded, a new purpose emerged for the gantry – aircraft crash testing. In 1972, the gantry was converted into the Impact Dynamics Research Facility (IDRF) and was used to investigate the crashworthiness of General Aviation (GA) aircraft and rotorcraft. The facility performed full-scale crash tests of GA aircraft and helicopters, system qualification tests of Army helicopters, vertical drop tests of Boeing 707 and composite fuselage sections and drop tests of the F-111 crew escape capsule.

The gantry was even used to complete a number of component tests in support of the Mars Sample Return Earth Entry Vehicle.

With features including a bridge and a 72-foot vertical drop tower, the gantry was able to support planes that weighed up to 30,000 pounds. Engineers lifted aircraft as high as 200 feet in the air and released them to determine how well the craft endured the crash. Data from the crash tests were used to define a typical acceleration for survivable crashes as well as to establish impact criteria for aircraft seats. The impact criteria are still used today as the Federal Aviation Administration standard for certification.

In 1985, the structure was named a National Historic Landmark based on its considerable contributions to the Apollo program.

Revitalized Space Mission

The gantry provides engineers and astronauts a means to prepare for Orion's return to Earth from such missions. With its new mission, the gantry also received a new name – the Landing and Impact Research (LandIR) Facility.

Although originally capable of supporting only 30,000 pounds, the new bridge can bear up to 64,000 pounds after the summer 2007 renovations. Other renovations include a new elevator, floor repairs and a parallel winch capability that allows an accurate adjustment of the pitch of the test article. The new parallel winch system increases the ability to accurately control impact pitch and pitching rotational rate. The gantry can also perform pendulum swings from as high as 200 feet with resultant velocities of over 70 miles per hour.

The gantry makes researching for the optimal landing alternative for NASA's first attempted, manned dry landing on Earth possible. Orion's return on land rather than water will facilitate reuse of the capsule. A water landing would make reuse difficult due to the corrosiveness of salt water.

The testing process involves lifting the test article by steel cables to a height between 40 and 60 feet and swinging it back to Earth. Although the airbags appear most promising, the gantry has the capability to perform different kinds of tests, including a retro rocket landing system and a scale-model, water landing test using a four-foot-deep circular pool. So far, three types of tests have been conducted in support of the Orion program, each progressing from the previous to more realistic features.

The first test consisted of dropping a boilerplate test article that was half the diameter of what Orion will be. For the second round of testing, engineers added a welded structure to the top, with a shape more comparable to Orion to examine the article's tendency to flip or remain upright.

Hydro-Impact

The on-going tests for Orion continue with impacts on water. This is to ensure astronaut safety during a return to Earth mission. Similar to the Apollo program, Orion will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere at very high speeds and after slowing down, deploy parachutes to further slow the descent into the ocean. At NASA Langley Research Center, engineers use the hydro-impact research to determine the stresses on the vehicle and examine its behavior during a mock splashdown. 

The NASA Aeronautics team is working to transform aviation by enabling a new commercial market for supersonic travel over land. The centerpiece of this effort is the X-59 QueSST (short for Quiet SuperSonic Technology), a new X-plane designed to produce sonic "thumps" that could open the door to new certification standards for commercial supersonic service. NASA and Lockheed Martin are working together to design and build the X-59. Beginning in 2023, NASA will use this X-plane to measure public response to sonic thumps. 

More at www.nasa.gov/lowboom

The Hunt for New Worlds Continues with TESS

We’re getting ready to start our next mission to find new worlds! The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will find thousands of planets beyond our solar system for us to study in more detail. It’s preparing to launch from our Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in Florida.

Once it launches, TESS will look for new planets that orbit bright stars relatively close to Earth. We’re expecting to find giant planets, like Jupiter, but we’re also predicting we’ll find Earth-sized planets. Most of those planets will be within 300 light-years of Earth, which will make follow-up studies easier for other observatories.

TESS will find these new exoplanets by looking for their transits. A transit is a temporary dip in a star’s brightness that happens with predictable timing when a planet crosses between us and the star. The information we get from transits can tell us about the size of the planet relative to the size of its star. We’ve found nearly 3,000 planets using the transit method, many with our Kepler space telescope. That’s over 75% of all the exoplanets we’ve found so far!

TESS will look at nearly the entire sky (about 85%) over two years. The mission divides the sky into 26 sectors. TESS will look at 13 of them in the southern sky during its first year before scanning the northern sky the year after.

What makes TESS different from the other planet-hunting missions that have come before it? The Kepler mission (yellow) looked continually at one small patch of sky, spotting dim stars and their planets that are between 300 and 3,000 light-years away. TESS (blue) will look at almost the whole sky in sections, finding bright stars and their planets that are between 30 and 300 light-years away.

TESS will also have a brand new kind of orbit (visualized below). Once it reaches its final trajectory, TESS will finish one pass around Earth every 13.7 days (blue), which is half the time it takes for the Moon (gray) to orbit. This position maximizes the amount of time TESS can stare at each sector, and the satellite will transmit its data back to us each time its orbit takes it closest to Earth (orange).

Kepler’s goal was to figure out how common Earth-size planets might be. TESS’s mission is to find exoplanets around bright, nearby stars so future missions, like our James Webb Space Telescope, and ground-based observatories can learn what they’re made of and potentially even study their atmospheres. TESS will provide a catalog of thousands of new subjects for us to learn about and explore.

The TESS mission is led by MIT and came together with the help of many different partners. Learn more about TESS and how it will further our knowledge of exoplanets, or check out some more awesome images and videos of the spacecraft. And stay tuned for more exciting TESS news as the spacecraft launches!

Watch the Launch + More!

Sunday, April 15 11 a.m. EDT - NASA Social Mission Overview

Join mission experts to learn more about TESS, how it will search for worlds beyond our solar system and what scientists hope to find! Have questions? Use #askNASA to have them answered live during the broadcast.

Watch HERE. 

1 p.m. EDT - Prelaunch News Conference

Get an update on the spacecraft, the rocket and the liftoff operations ahead of the April 16 launch! Have questions? Use #askNASA to have them answered live during the broadcast.

Watch HERE.

3 p.m. EDT - Science News Conference

Hear from mission scientists and experts about the science behind the TESS mission. Have questions? Use #askNASA to have them answered live during the broadcast. 

Watch HERE.

4 p.m. EDT - TESS Facebook Live

This live show will dive into the science behind the TESS spacecraft, explain how we search for planets outside our solar system and will allow you to ask your questions to members of the TESS team. 

Watch HERE. 

Monday, April 16 10 a.m. EDT - NASA EDGE: TESS Facebook Live

This half-hour live show will discuss the TESS spacecraft, the science of searching for planets outside our solar system, and the launch from Cape Canaveral.

Watch HERE.

1 p.m. EDT - Reddit AMA

Join us live on Reddit for a Science AMA to discuss the hunt for exoplanets and the upcoming launch of TESS!

Join in HERE.

6 p.m. EDT - Launch Coverage!

TESS is slated to launch at 6:32 p.m. EDT on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from our Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Watch HERE.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Vibration test at 80% power of the European Structural Test Article conducted at NASA Glenn’s Space Power Facility at Plum Brook Station, Sandusky, Ohio.

New NASA X-Plane Construction Begins Now

NASA’s aeronautical innovators are ready to take things supersonic, but with a quiet twist.

For the first time in decades, NASA aeronautics is moving forward with the construction of a piloted X-plane, designed from scratch to fly faster than sound with the latest in quiet supersonic technologies.

The new X-plane’s mission: provide crucial data that could enable commercial supersonic passenger air travel over land.

To that end, NASA on April 2 awarded a $247.5 million contract to Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company of Palmdale, Calif., to build the X-plane and deliver it to the agency’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in California by the end of 2021.

“It is super exciting to be back designing and flying X-planes at this scale,” said Jaiwon Shin, NASA’s associate administrator for aeronautics. “Our long tradition of solving the technical barriers of supersonic flight to benefit everyone continues.”

The key to success for this mission – known as the Low-Boom Flight Demonstrator – will be to demonstrate the ability to fly supersonic, yet generate sonic booms so quiet, people on the ground will hardly notice them, if they hear them at all.

Current regulations, which are based on aircraft speed, ban supersonic flight over land. With the low-boom flights, NASA intends to gather data on how effective the quiet supersonic technology is in terms of public acceptance by flying over a handful of U.S. cities, which have yet to be selected.

The complete set of community response data is targeted for delivery in 2025 to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) from which they can develop and adopt new rules based on perceived sound levels to allow commercial supersonic flight over land.

Years of sonic boom research, beginning with the X-1 first breaking the sound barrier in 1947 – when NASA was the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics – paved the way for the Low-Boom Flight Demonstration X-plane’s nearly silent treatment of supersonic flight.

The answer to how the X-plane's design makes a quiet sonic boom is in the way its uniquely-shaped hull generates supersonic shockwaves. Shockwaves from a conventional aircraft design coalesce as they expand away from the airplane’s nose and tail, resulting in two distinct and thunderous sonic booms.

But the design’s shape sends those shockwaves away from the aircraft in a way that prevents them from coming together in two loud booms. Instead, the much weaker shockwaves reach the ground still separated, which will be heard as a quick series of soft thumps – again, if anyone standing outside notices them at all.

It’s an idea first theorized during the 1960s and tested by NASA and others during the years since, including flying from 2003-2004 an F-5E Tiger fighter jetmodified with a uniquely-shaped nose, which proved the boom-reducing theory was sound.

NASA’s confidence in the Low-Boom Flight Demonstration design is buoyed by its more recent research using results from the latest in wind-tunnel testing, and advanced computer simulation tools, and actual flight testing.

Recent studies have investigated methods to improve the aerodynamic efficiency of supersonic aircraft wings, and sought to better understand sonic boom propagation through the atmosphere.

Even a 150-year-old photographic technique has helped unlock the modern mysteries of supersonic shockwave behavior during the past few years.

“We’ve reached this important milestone only because of the work NASA has led with its many partners from other government agencies, the aerospace industry and forward-thinking academic institutions everywhere,” said Peter Coen, NASA’s Commercial Supersonic Technology project manager.

So now it’s time to cut metal and begin construction.

The X-plane’s configuration will be based on a preliminary design developed by Lockheed Martin under a contract awarded in 2016. The proposed aircraft will be 94 feet long with a wingspan of 29.5 feet and have a fully-fueled takeoff weight of 32,300 pounds.

The design research speed of the X-plane at a cruising altitude of 55,000 feet is Mach 1.42, or 940 mph. Its top speed will be Mach 1.5, or 990 mph. The jet will be propelled by a single General Electric F414 engine, the powerplant used by F/A-18E/F fighters.

A single pilot will be in the cockpit, which will be based on the design of the rear cockpit seat of the T-38 training jet famously used for years by NASA’s astronauts to stay proficient in high-performance aircraft.

Jim Less is one of the two primary NASA pilots at Armstrong who will fly the X-plane after Lockheed Martin’s pilots have completed initial test flights to make sure the design is safe to fly.

“A supersonic manned X-plane!” Less said, already eager to get his hands on the controls. “This is probably going to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me. We’re all pretty excited.”

Less is the deputy chief pilot for Low-Boom Flight Demonstration. He and his boss, chief pilot Nils Larson, have already provided some input into things like cockpit design and the development of the simulators they will use for flight training while the aircraft is under construction.

“It’s pretty rare in a test pilot’s career that he can be involved in everything from the design phase to the flight phase, and really the whole life of the program,” Less said.

The program is divided into three phases and the tentative schedule looks like this:

2019 – NASA conducts a critical design review of the low-boom X-plane configuration, which, if successful, allows final construction and assembly to be completed.

2021 – Construction of the aircraft at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale is completed, to be followed by a series of test flights to demonstrate the aircraft is safe to fly and meets all of NASA’s performance requirements. The aircraft is then officially delivered to NASA, completing Phase One.

2022 – Phase Two will see NASA fly the X-plane in the supersonic test range over Edwards to prove the quiet supersonic technology works as designed, its performance is robust, and it is safe for operations in the National Airspace System.

2023 to 2025 – Phase Three begins with the first community response test flights, which will be staged from Armstrong. Further community response activity will take place in four to six cities around the U.S.

All of NASA’s aeronautics research centers play a part in the Low-Boom Flight Demonstration mission, which includes construction of the demonstrator and the community overflight campaign. For the low-boom flight demonstrator itself, these are their roles:

Ames Research Center, California — configuration assessment and systems engineering.

Armstrong Flight Research Center, California — airworthiness, systems engineering, safety and mission assurance, flight/ground operations, flight systems, project management, and community response testing.

Glenn Research Center, Cleveland — configuration assessment and propulsion performance.

Langley Research Center, Virginia — systems engineering, configuration assessment and research data, flight systems, project management, and community response testing.

“There are so many people at NASA who have put in their very best efforts to get us to this point,” said Shin. “Thanks to their work so far and the work to come, we will be able to use this X-plane to generate the scientifically collected community response data critical to changing the current rules to transforming aviation!”

Jim Banke Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate

Langley Research Center Centennial Event

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, right, and Langley Research Center Director, Dr. David E. Bowles, left, poses for a photo with staff dressed in space suits on Langley Research Center's Centennial float on Thursday, Dec. 1, 2016, at Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA.

Photo Credit: NASA Langley Research Center