Engineers completed installing the heat shield on
NASA’s Orion spacecraft ahead of its first trip to space in December. The flight
test will send an uncrewed Orion 3,600 miles into space before returning it to
Earth for the splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. The heat shield will help protect
the Orion crew vehicle from temperatures of about 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit
during its reentry into Earth’s atmosphere.
Image Credit: NASA/Daniel Casper
NASA and Lockheed Martin engineers have installed the largest heat shield
ever constructed on the crew module of the agency's Orion spacecraft. The work
marks a major milestone on the path toward the spacecraft's first launch in
December.
"It is extremely exciting to see the heat shield in place, ready to do its
job," said Mark Geyer, Orion Program manager at NASA's Johnson Space Center in
Houston. "The heat shield is such a critical piece, not just for this mission,
but for our plans to send humans into deep space."
The heat shield is made of a coating called Avcoat, which burns away as it
heats up in a process called ablation to prevent the transfer of extreme
temperatures to the crew module. The Avcoat is covered with a silver reflective
tape that protects the material from the extreme cold temperatures of space.
Orion’s flight test, or Exploration Flight Test-1, will provide engineers
with data about the heat shield's ability to protect Orion and its future crews
from the 4,000-degree heat of reentry and an ocean splashdown following the
spacecraft’s 20,000-mph reentry from space.
Data gathered during the flight will inform decisions about design
improvements on the heat shield and other Orion systems, and authenticate
existing computer models and new approaches to space systems design and
development. This process is critical to reducing overall risks and costs of
future Orion missions -- missions that will include exploring an asteroid and
Mars.
Orion's flight test also will provide important data for the agency’s Space
Launch System (SLS) rocket and ocean recovery of Orion. Engineers at NASA’s
Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, have built an advanced
adapter to connect Orion to the United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket
that will launch the spacecraft during the December test. The adapter also will
be used during future SLS missions. NASA’s Ground Systems Development and
Operations Program, based at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, will recover the
Orion crew module with the U.S. Navy after its splashdown in the Pacific
Ocean.
The heat shield was manufactured at Lockheed Martin's Waterton Facility near
Denver. Construction was completed at Textron Defense Systems near Boston before
the heat shield was shipped to the Operations and Checkout Building at Kennedy,
where Orion is being assembled.
In the coming months, the Orion crew and service modules will be joined and
put through functional tests before the spacecraft is transported to Kennedy’s
Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility for fueling. The spacecraft then will be
transferred to the Launch Abort System (LAS) Facility to be connected to the LAS
before making the journey to Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 37 for pad
integration and launch operations.
For more information on Orion, visit:
NASA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
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