Disaster escape system makes last road stop at Space Museum
BY TODD G. DICKSON – The Las Cruces Bulletin
Call it the first small step to mankind’s next big leap.
It’s the launch abort system for NASA’s new flagship rocket, Orion that is intended to take astronauts back to the moon and even possibly to Mars. And it’s being tested at the place that gave birth to the U.S. space program – White Sands Missile Ran
ge.
That’s why, despite dreary rainy weather Monday, March 9, missile range and New Mexico Space Museum officials were giddy to see the system parked in the museum’s lot before taking the final leg of its journey from Langley, Va., to WSMR.
At the missile range, it will be fitted on top of the Orion capsule for a series of stress tests before beginning another series of launch tests from the range this summer. The launch abort system is essentially a carrier holding the capsule that can whisk it away from the rest of the rocket in case something goes wrong with the Ares launch rockets.
These first tests will evaluate how well the system can do that job by evaluating stresses to the capsule from “stacking” it on top, said Gabriel Baca, NASA operations representative at WSMR. The system being tested mirrors the size, shape and mass of the actual system and will be fitted with sensitive equipment to measure the stresses under different conditions, he said.
Tests with actual propellants taking it a mile in to the sky will follow this summer. Baca said more than 100 people will be working out of the missile range on these first tests.
Orion is part of NASA’s shift to have private-sector focus on orbital launches so the space agency can focus on deep space exploration and manned exploration of the local solar system. Once Orion and a new orbital launch delivery system is developed, the space shuttle will be retired, which is scheduled to happen next year.
Both Orion and Ares I are elements of NASA’s Project Constellation, which plans to send explorers back to the Moon by 2020, and then to Mars and other destinations in the Solar System. NASA awarded Lockheed Martin the contract to create Orion.
Orion will launch from Launch Complex 39 at Kennedy Space Center, the same launch complex that currently launches the Space Shuttle. The first Orion flight is scheduled for September 2014. If commercial orbital transportation services are unavailable, Orion will handle logistic flights to the International Space Station.
