The last of eight reaction control system (RCS) pods for NASA’s Orion Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) arrived this week at Kennedy Space Center’s Operations and Checkout Building (O&C) from the manufacturer, Aerojet, in Redmond, Wash.

“Arrival of the final reaction control system pod marks a significant milestone as we prepare NASA’s Orion crew module for its first flight test,” said Glenn Chinn, the deputy manager of the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle Program in Kennedy’s Orion Production Operations Office.

“The pods will provide the critical maneuvers necessary for Orion’s re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.”

The first set of pods arrived at Kennedy on Feb. 18, with subsequent pods arriving March 11, and April 5 and 19.

The right-roll thruster pod with two rocket engines was the last to arrive, and joined the other seven pods already in the facility. Included in the group are two pitch-up thruster pods with a single rocket engine; two pitch-down thruster pods, each with a single rocket engine; two right- and left-yaw pods, each with a single rocket engine, and a left roll thruster pod with two rocket engines.

Before the pods were delivered to Kennedy, Aerojet put each of them through a series of tests, including proof pressure and leak, engine vibration, rocket engine hot fire acceptance and electrical functional testing.

Lockheed Martin will unpack and visually inspect all of the pods. Then technicians will add short propellant line segments and line brackets to each.

Beginning in June, the pods will undergo additional proof pressure and leak testing, valve leak testing and rocket engine functional testing. Aerojet will support processing activities that involve the rocket engine pods with procedure reviews, and on-site engineering and assembly support during installation and testing on the crew module.

Aerojet Program Director for Human Space, Sam Wiley, said he can’t wait for the RCS pods to be installed onto the crew module.

“We put our heart into our products and the installation work will wrap up more than three years of design and development activities,” Wiley said. “We’re ready to support EFT-1 for flight.”

The pods and their engines will be installed in various locations on the Orion crew module.

Two of the single engine pods will be located in the crew module’s forward bay, with the remaining pods located in the aft bay. Together they will provide full attitude control during Orion’s re-entry and landing.

Orion is the exploration spacecraft designed to carry humans farther into space than ever before. The spacecraft will provide emergency abort capability, sustain crews during space travel and provide safe re-entry from deep-space return velocities.

Orion’s first uncrewed test flight is scheduled to launch in 2014 atop a United Launch Alliance Delta IV heavy rocket. A second uncrewed flight test is scheduled for 2017 on NASA’s Space Launch System rocket.

Source:

http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/mpcv/orion_rcs_pod.html

At Marshall Space Flight Center, a relatively simple technology developed to smooth potentially dangerous vibrations in NASA’s defunct Ares I crew launch vehicle is finding its way into the wider world as a way to steady buildings, aircraft, ships and other structures reacting to winds, waves and even earthquakes. The passive approach uses the weight of a liquid coupled to a structure to dampen shaking, swaying, fluttering and other oscillations.

NASA has spent about $5 million refining the technique it calls fluid structure coupling (FSC), but has been reluctant to reveal details because of the military potential growing out of the launch-vehicle application that spawned it originally. Now engineers here have expanded their early analytical and experimental work on the Ares I thrust-oscillation problem to encompass a host of potential applications, including stabilizing nuclear power plants and tall buildings in earthquakes and violent storms, ships and drilling platforms in rough seas, and fuel-filled aircraft wings in turbulent flight conditions.

“Once you [understand] the concept, it has allowed us to ask a lot more questions in a lot more places,” says Rob Berry, chief technologist and manager of the FSC project at Marshall. “We’re saying anywhere fluid and structures coexist, you can control the coupling. The question is, ‘can you control enough fluid, enough coupling, to make it worthwhile?’”

The Ares I application used an FSC device immersed in the upper stage liquid oxygen (LOX) tank to calm vibrations set up in the vehicle stack as its solid-fuel first stage neared propellant burnout. The thrust oscillation posed a danger to astronauts in the Orion crew capsule at the top of the stack (AW&ST July 6, 2009, p. 42). Ultimately, opponents of a government-owned orbital crew vehicle seized on the thrust-oscillation issue as ammunition in their successful efforts to kill the project. But work on the FSC technology continued at a low level, using surplus hardware scrounged from the boneyards of this Apollo-vintage propulsion center and funds from NASA’s Office of the Chief Technologist, the heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS) program, and other sources.

The basic idea is what Jeff Lindner, one of the engineers who invented the FSC launch-vehicle application, calls “a compressible degree of freedom.” In the Ares I, Lindner and his colleagues used the weight of the LOX in the upper stage to dampen thrust oscillation by building a system that gave the relatively heavy cryogenic liquid another place to go instead of transmitting vibrations upward from the solid-fuel first stage.

“The bottom of the tank moves up or down, and that fluid goes along for the ride,” says Lindner. “If you put a compressible degree of freedom, a bubble—think of a balloon—in the tank, when it compresses the fluid moves toward it. When it expands, the fluid moves away from it … Now we have a very large percentage of the fluid which we control the dynamics of, all by controlling the dynamics of that compressible degree of freedom.”

The FSC project is using the 40-story vehicle dynamics test facility originally built for the Saturn Moon rocket, and later modified to handle the Ares I, to demonstrate just how little fluid is needed to stabilize a tall building. The team has mounted oscillating weights near the top of the structure that are massive enough to set the whole building moving with an easily perceptible sway.

In the photo, Lindner handles part of the off-the-shelf green plastic pipe holding 13,000 lb. of water that has an FSC device inside. As long as the system is engaged at the top of the 4.5-million-lb. structure, the oscillating weights barely move the building. But when the valve in Lindner’s right hand is closed, isolating the device, water in a nearby transparent tank begins sloshing dramatically as the building sways perceptibly.

“We’re able to get greater than a four-times reduction [in lateral motion],” says Berry, noting that the water in the FSC pipe has only 0.3% of the mass of the building.

Berry’s group has studied the phenomenon analytically and empirically, and is using the large-scale experiment “to make sure the physics doesn’t fall apart.” Some of that work may help SLS designers if they need to dampen loads on their big new launch vehicle, but NASA also has embarked on some missionary work.

After passing their findings along to military research and development organizations that may want to make classified use of the techniques, Berry says, NASA has been briefing various civilian entities on FSC. Not surprisingly, engineering firms that specialize in skyscrapers are showing interest, he says, as are shipbuilders and oil companies with deep-sea drilling platforms.

“What’s important to know is it’s mature,” Berry says. “This is not just some lab experiments and concepts. We spent the time, because of Ares where we had a real issue to go solve, to understand the physics.”

Source:

http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/AW_04_29_2013_p22-571382.xml

ATK has successfully completed its solid rocket booster Preliminary Design Review (PDR) with NASA for the new Space Launch System (SLS). The PDR milestone indicates the booster design is on track to support first flight of the SLS in 2017. The SLS vehicle will support NASA’s human spaceflight exploration to all destinations beyond low-earth orbit.

“This is a tremendous milestone for ATK as we work toward building the boosters for our country’s Space Launch System,” said Charlie Precourt, vice president and general manager of ATK’s Space Launch division. “NASA’s SLS will enable human exploration for decades to come.”

With the successful completion of PDR, the SLS booster design can now proceed with the associated activities required to advance the design toward Critical Design Review (CDR). Additionally, a ground static firing of qualification motor-1 is planned for later this year at ATK.

“The booster PDR was successful and speaks to the importance of a collaborative design process with our NASA customer” said Fred Brasfield, ATK vice president, Next-generation Booster.

The SLS booster PDR is a significant step toward providing the necessary technical and programmatic information needed for NASA to obtain approval to proceed with development of the Space Launch System—which will support a variety of missions of national and international importance.

ATK has 29 key suppliers across 16 states: Alabama, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin.

Source:

http://atk.mediaroom.com/2013-04-29-ATK-Solid-Rocket-Boosters-Complete-Major-Space-Launch-System-Program-Milestone

Before NASA’s new Space Launch System (SLS) flies to space on its inaugural mission in 2017, it will fly in place at the agency’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.

The B-2 Test Stand at Stennis, originally built to test Saturn rocket stages that propelled humans to the moon, is being completely renovated to test the SLS core stage in late 2016 and early 2017. The SLS stage, with four RS-25 rocket engines, will be installed on the stand for propellant fill and drain testing and two hot fire tests.

“These tests will help us understand how the spacecraft and engines behave and provide critical information for ensuring mission safety,” said Rick Rauch, manager of the B-2 Test Stand Restoration, Buildout and Test Project. “After all, if there are problems, it’s better to address them on the ground than in the air.”

NASA is developing the SLS to send humans deeper into space than ever before — to places like an asteroid and Mars. The SLS will launch NASA’s Orion spacecraft and other payloads from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The SLS program is managed at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. The first test flight of SLS will be in 2017. The rocket will send an uncrewed Orion spacecraft around the moon.

Stennis engineers were asked early in the SLS development process to determine the cost of restoring the B-2 stand to the condition needed for green run testing of the spacecraft’s core stage. A green run is the first time the engines are assembled into a single configuration with the core stage and fired at nearly full-power. This will test the compatibility and functionality of the system to ensure a safe and viable design.

The team spent 18 months conducting structural, mechanical and electrical system evaluations to assess the work needed since Apollo- and space shuttle-era testing.

Once the decision was made to proceed with core stage testing, Stennis engineers began converting original hand-drawn facility blueprints into computer models so design work could be completed. The actual renovation work was divided into three phases: restoration, buildout and special test equipment.

“In the first phase, we are restoring the test facility to its original design condition, where it could be used to test any number of stages,” Rauch explained. “In the second phase, we will focus on building out the stand specifically to accommodate the SLS core stage. Then, in the third phase, we will complete the structural, mechanical and electrical interfaces required to test the core stage.”

Each phase involves assessment, design and contractor support. In the end, no area of the stand will be left untouched, including all structural areas, as well as supporting mechanical, electrical and piping systems. The fundamental design of the stand will not be changed since it originally was built to test rocket stages.

However, the SLS stage is different from the Saturn stages and the space shuttle main propulsion test article installed and fired on the stand in earlier years. It is taller, standing 212 feet. To lift the stage into place, the derrick crane atop the stand must be extended 50 feet. The stand’s weight and thrust takeout structures also must be modified, and a higher support frame must be erected. The process will involve repositioning an existing 1.2 million pound frame about 20 feet and building a new 100-foot-tall superstructure atop it.

“The teams at the Stennis Space Center are doing a great job preparing the B-2 facility,” said John Rector, SLS Stages Green Run test manager at Marshall. “We’re on track to begin testing there in 2016. It’s an exciting time for NASA as we establish a new national capability for future space exploration.” Demolition work began on several test stand levels late last summer. Structural restoration has begun. Work is to be completed in time for delivery of the SLS core stage in 2016, with installation and testing to follow.

Source:

http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/b2stand.html