Parachute Test Fails for NASA’s New Spaceship
A
mock-up of NASA’s Orion space shuttle successor twisted, tumbled and fell from
thousands of feet up after a parachute failed to inflate properly during a July
31 test.
The
programmer chute was designed to stabilize the mock-up before beginning a test
of its parachute recovery system, but instead sent the capsule
toward the desert floor at the U.S. Army’s Yuma Proving Grounds in Arizona.
"This
is the most complicated parachute test NASA has run since the ’60′s," said
Carol Evans, test manager for the parachute system at NASA’s Johnson Space
Center in Houston. "We are taking a close look at what caused the set-up
chutes to malfunction. A failure of set-up parachutes is actually one of the
most common occurrences in this sort of test."
The
Orion crew module is part of NASA’s
program slated to return astronauts to the moon by 2020. Orion will carry
astronauts into orbit atop the Ares I rocket to dock with an orbiting Earth
departure stage previously launched by an Ares V rocket, and from there proceed
to the moon.
The
space shuttles are scheduled to
from service as NASA’s workhorses in 2010.
The
failure occurred in one of 10 parachutes that make up the testing equipment,
and not in the parachute recovery system itself.
Some
of the parachutes helped the mock-up get clear of the C-17 airplane which
carried the test capsule up to a drop height of 25,000 feet (7,620 meters). The
programmer chute that failed to inflate was designed to help two other
stabilization chutes get the capsule into the right orientation, before
releasing at a predetermined time to allow the parachute recovery system to
take over.
The
Orion recovery parachute system is based on the same eight-chute system used
for the Apollo missions, for use in case of a launch abort.
Two
drogue parachutes first deploy to slow and stabilize the capsule so that it
points in the right direction. Once the drogue chutes get cut away, three pilot
chutes deploy to each pull out one of the three main 116-feet (35-meter)
diameter parachutes that are meant to ensure a safe landing speed.
The
mock-up was already dropping faster than intended by the time the drogue
parachutes deployed during the test. The drogue parachutes cut away immediately
and sent the test capsule into freefall.
The
falling mock-up began to tumble out of control, and the resulting forces pulled
the main parachutes out and tore away two of them. The third battered parachute
held, but could not slow the falling mock-up on its own.
A
impact on the ground left the mock-up severely damaged. NASA engineers and
managers are looking to test procedures and test hardware and set-up, as well
as video and photograph evidence, to figure out what might have led to the
programmer chute’s failure.
NASA
announced in August that the first manned flight test
launch until 2014 at the earliest, or four years after the space shuttle
retires. Earlier this week, the agency unveiled plans to add a
absorbing system to smooth out excessive shaking of its Ares I rocket
during launch.
– Mock Orion Capsule Crashes to Earth
– NASA’s Constellation Journey Begins – Part 1,
2
– Back to the Moon with NASA’s Constellation