The United States successfully completed a test of the Orion spacecraft's launch abort system in the preparation for executing the future missions to the moon and Mars, NASA said in a press release on Tuesday

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 02nd July, 2019) The United States successfully completed a test of the Orion spacecraft's launch abort system in the preparation for executing the future missions to the moon and Mars, NASA said in a press release on Tuesday.

"NASA successfully demonstrated Tuesday the Orion spacecraft's launch abort system can outrun a speeding rocket and pull astronauts to safety during an emergency during launch," the release said. "The test is another milestone in the agency's preparation for Artemis missions to the Moon that will lead to astronaut missions to Mars."

NASA explained that during the roughly three-minute test, the Orion spacecraft traveled to an altitude of about six miles, at which point the abort sequence was triggered.

The abort system pulled the crew module away from the rocket, flipped the capsule to properly orient it and released the module for a splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean, NASA said.

A team of scientists analyzed data recording during the test to get additional insight on the abort system's performance, NASA added.

On May 31, NASA announced that three private US aerospace firms have been chosen to build and operate unmanned spacecraft that will begin exploring the lunar surface in September 2020 in preparation for a human landing.

The objective of the Artemis program is to land US astronauts on the Moon by 2024 and establish a sustained human presence on and around the Moon by 2028. </s> NASA tested launch abort system for the Orion spacecraft Tuesday morning at Cape Canaveral.

The uncrewed test, called Ascent Abort-2, was to see whether the abort system can steer the spacecraft and carry astronauts a safe distance if an emergency happens while Orion is trying to reach orbit, according to NASA.

The test involved an 11-ton test version of the Orion spacecraft. It lifted off at approximately 7 a.m. EDT. After rocketing away for more than a minute, rockets near the top of the spacecraft fired, separating the abort system and the crew capsule.

The test did not involve parachutes. A data recorder on board was ejected as part of the test and will be recovered.

The Orion is the spacecraft being developed in the effort to return humans to the moon and, eventually, the first crewed mission to Mars. </s> NASA has successfully tested the ‘launch abort system’ on its Orion spacecraft - a system that could prove vital for astronauts in the future.

The test flight took place at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 07:00 ET (11:00 BST) today.

During the test, the 22,000 pound Orion test vehicle was launched to an altitude of 31,000 feet, before the Launch Abort System was activated.

A jettison motor then ignited, releasing the crew module (which was unmanned for the test flight) into a free-fall down into the Atlantic Ocean.

During the test, NASA also ejected 12 data recorders into the ocean, each equipped with a GPS receiver. These could be key in helping boats find to find the crew module.

Mark Kirasich, Orion programme manager, said: “It was a very smooth liftoff. By all first accounts, it was magnificent.”

NASA hopes that the test flight will help pave the way for future manned missions to the Moon and then Mars.

“Our Launch Abort System is a key safety feature of the spacecraft — it will protect the crew members who fly onboard Orion during the most challenging part of the mission, which is the ascent phase.” </s> If you would like to see more articles like this please support our coverage of the space program by becoming a Spaceflight Now Member . If everyone who enjoys our website helps fund it, we can expand and improve our coverage further.

Officials hailed an action-packed three-minute test flight Tuesday over Cape Canaveral that exercised the Orion spacecraft’s launch abort rocket, a key safety system on the capsule NASA is developing to carry astronauts back to the moon.

“We couldn’t have asked for a better flight, better mission, better performance,” said Don Reed, head of the Orion flight test management office. “That about sums it up.”

“It was really special for the program, and really a big step forward for us,” said Mark Kirasich, NASA’s Orion program manager at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Tuesday’s test flight, designated Orion Ascent Abort-2, cost approximately $256 million and is the Orion program’s last flight test before an unpiloted mission around the moon planned for late 2020, or more likely in 2021.

The Orion spacecraft is a major component of NASA’s newly-named Artemis program, which aims to return U.S. astronauts to the lunar surface in 2024. Under NASA’s current plans, astronauts will lift off from Earth riding Orion spacecraft mounted atop the giant Space Launch System rocket, a 322-foot-tall (98-meter) launcher which is several years behind schedule.

NASA says astronauts will ride on the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System for the first time in the 2022 timeframe on a flight around the moon and back to Earth. That mission is named Artemis 2, and will be a precursor to a lunar landing attempt in 2024 on the Artemis 3 mission, according to NASA officials.

That assumes Congress funds fast-track moon landing program, which NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told CNN last month will require $20 billion to $30 billion in additional funding over the space agency’s previously-planned budget, which targeted a human lunar landing in 2028.

The successful outcome of the abort test Tuesday sets the stage for a flurry of work over the next one-to-two years to finish assembly and testing of the first Orion spacecraft capable of reaching the moon, along with final construction and a test-firing of the first SLS core stage, the component responsible for the program’s most recent delays.

Tuesday’s flight used a simplified Orion capsule built specifically for the launch escape test, crowned with an abort system identical to the unit that will be used on crewed launches.

The vehicle rocketed into the sky over Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 7 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT) Tuesday.

A converted SR118 rocket motor from the U.S. Air Force’s inventory of decommissioned Cold War-era Peacekeeper missiles provided a half-million pounds to propel the capsule off of pad 46 at Cape Canaveral. The booster was weighted down to allow it reach just the right altitude, speed and aerodynamic pressure for the abort test, mimicking the conditions the Orion spacecraft will encounter while riding the must larger Space Launch System.

“We actually had to add over 100,000 pounds (45 metric tons) of ballast to it just to slow it down, because it’s pretty sporty,” said Jenny Devolites, NASA’s test director for Tuesday’s flight.

The 93-foot-tall (28-meter) single-stage vehicle climbed to an altitude of 31,000 feet (about 9,500 meters) in approximately 50 seconds, reaching a speed of Mach 1.08 before the test capsule’s on-board computer triggered an abort command. The command initiated series of rocket firings and maneuvers using an abort system mounted on top of the Peacekeeper motor and Orion capsule.

The abort motor instantly pulled the Orion test capsule away from the Peacekeeper’s SR118 booster moments before the rocket exhausted its propellant supply and burned out.

The four-nozzle abort motor quickly ramped up to 400,000 pounds of thrust and fired more than five seconds, accelerating the capsule with the force of about seven Gs to out-run the SR118 booster.

The attitude control motor located at the pointy end of the abort tower stabilized the capsule during the maneuver to pull away from the booster. Fifteen seconds after the start of the abort, the attitude control motor began reorienting the capsule end-over-end to turn the craft’s heat shield toward the ground.

The Orion capsule’s launch abort system looks a lot like the escape tower flown on top of the Saturn 5 moon rocket in the Apollo program. But the attitude control motor is a major difference, consisting of eight variable-thrust nozzles placed at 45-degree angles around the abort tower, and each with the ability to be independently controlled and modulated.

The Apollo spacecraft had a non-vectoring “pitch” motor to send the capsule in one direction during a launch escape event. The upgrade gives the Orion spacecraft the ability to escape from its launcher under more extreme conditions than possible on Apollo missions.

The Orion’s computer senses the vehicle’s orientation during an abort and sends commands to the attitude control motor to move the position of pintles inside each nozzle to adjust thrust and keep the vehicle properly pointed.

Once the Orion capsule was in the correct bottom-down orientation, a third rocket motor on the abort system ignited to jettison the test vehicle. At that point in a real abort scenario, with astronauts inside, a series of parachutes would begin unfurling to slow the spaceship for splashdown.

NASA did not include parachutes on Tuesday’s test flight.

If astronauts flew on Tuesday’s test launch, “they would have been fine, with parachutes of course,” Reed said. “But all the way up to the point we jettisoned, they would have been fine.

“People ask that question, why do we not have parachutes,” Reed said. “And the simple answer is we’ve done 47 (drop) tests at Yuma (Proving Ground in Arizona). We’ve done ground testing, so we know how the environment impacts the components that are part of that system.”

NASA finished qualification testing of the Orion parachutes last year, and the chutes worked as designed during the Orion capsule’s return from a test flight in Earth orbit in 2014.

An agency spokesperson said the decision not to include the parachutes, and their associated deployment mechanism and control systems, saved around $30 million, and allowed teams to conduct the abort test sooner.

Without the chutes, the Orion capsule plummeted into the Atlantic Ocean around 7 miles (11 kilometers) east of Cape Canaveral, hitting the water at an estimated 300 mph (480 kilometers per hour) around 3 minutes, 12 seconds, after liftoff, Reed said. The spent Peacekeeper booster and abort system also impacted the ocean, sending plumes of water hundreds of feet into the air.

All the components were designed to sink.

On the way back to the ground, the Orion test capsule transmitted data recorded from nearly 900 temperature, pressure and acoustic sensors back to engineers for analysis. The vehicle also ejected 12 data recorders, all of which were retrieved by recovery boats in less than 90 minutes, Reed said.

A quick assessment of the data suggested the abort system functioned as intended.

“One of the most important parts of the test was to see how the attitude control motor, that’s one of the three motors, performed,” Kirasich said. “Right after the test was completed, we all ran up to the console of the LAS (launch abort system) operator and each of us watched the plots.

“It’s a single motor that (has) eight valves around the circumference, and you have to modulate the valves, first of all to direct the thrust, but you also have to keep the motor pressure steady,” Kirasich said. “That’s a key part of this technology. The internal motor pressure was rock solid, straight line, and it had excellent control characteristics.”

The ascent abort test Tuesday came after a series of ground test-firings of the Orion abort system, and a flight test conducted in May 2010 to simulate an escape from an explosion on the launch pad.

The pad abort in 2010 flew with a prototype abort system. The ascent abort Tuesday tested a fully functioning abort apparatus, the same configuration to be relied upon by astronauts.

No astronauts were on-board for Tuesday’s flight, but veteran space flier Randy Bresnik said before the test that he was eager to see the results of the experiment.

“It is so important because it’s the only one of its type in the dynamic flight environment, the environment where it’s going to be needed most,” Bresnik said.

On a real space mission, the Orion spacecraft would command an abort automatically if sensors detected a malfunction in the launch vehicle. Astronauts riding on the spacecraft will also be able to manually initiate an abort, Bresnik said.

The emergency landing of Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin and NASA flight engineer Nick Hague after a failed Soyuz rocket launch in October 2018 illustrated the importance of a launch abort capability, Bresnik said.

“We have to prepare for this, even though it’s a low likelihood of happening,” Bresnik said. “It had been 35 years since anyone on the planet had to exercise their launch abort system (before the Soyuz abort last year).

Hague himself chimed in on Twitter from the International Space Station a few hours after Tuesday’s abort test. He successfully launched earlier this year on a subsequent Soyuz flight to the station.

“As someone who has had his life saved by a launch abort system, I can attest that today was a truly significant milestone in the Artemis program,” Hague tweeted. “Thank you to all associated with the … test for your hard work and dedication, and congratulations on a successful test!”

Ground test-firings of the abort system’s rocket motors will continue over the next year, Kirasich said. Teams have accomplished four of the escape system’s nine required qualification firings — three for each rocket motor — for human flights.

Lockheed Martin, NASA’s prime contractor on the Orion program, oversees development of the launch abort system. Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems, formerly known as Orbital ATK, supplied the abort and attitude control motors, while Aerojet Rocketdyne built the jettison motor, the last of the three abort system rockets to fire Tuesday.

Northrop Grumman also partnered with the U.S. Air Force to ready the Peacekeeper-derived abort test booster for launch. The booster is also based on the Minotaur 4 rocket used to launch small satellites into orbit.

“In Orion, crew safety and spacecraft reliability are very high priorities for us, and our launch abort system is a key safety feature of the spacecraft,” Kirasich said before Tuesday’s test flight. “It will protect the crew members who fly on-board Orion. It will protect them during the most challenging part of the mission, which is the ascent phase.”

Space shuttle crews had no ability to use an abort rocket to escape a catastrophic failure during launch.

The new commercial crew capsules developed by Boeing and SpaceX to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station both have “pusher” escape systems, employing liquid-fueled rocket engines along the rear circumference of the vehicles to propel astronauts away from a launcher in an emergency.

NASA selected Lockheed Martin to begin developing the Orion spacecraft in 2006 under the auspices of the space agency’s now-defunct Constellation program, which started under the George W. Bush administration in the aftermath of the loss of the shuttle Columbia and its seven-person crew in 2003.

After the Columbia accident, the Bush White House directed NASA to end the shuttle program after completing the International Space Station, allowing the agency to re-focus on deep space exploration, with an objective of returning humans to the moon’s surface by 2020.

But the Constellation program ran into numerous delays and cost estimates crew, prompting President Obama to cancel the program in 2010. A year later, the White House and Congress agreed on a new strategy for NASA, salvaging work already completed on the Orion program and kicking off development of a new rocket called the Space Launch System for eventual missions to Mars.

The Orion and Space Launch System programs have encountered more difficulties since 2011, delaying the first launch of an unpiloted version of the crew capsule on the SLS from 2017 until no earlier than late 2020, or more likely some time in 2021.

NASA and Lockheed Martin conducted an Orion test flight in Earth orbit in December 2014 to test the capsule’s heat shield at the speeds it will encounter on re-entry from the moon. Engineers also conducted the Orion pad abort test in 2010.

NASA has spent around $16 billion on the Orion program since its start, according to Laura Forczyk, a space policy analyst. The SLS program has cost around $14 billion to date, she said earlier this year.

The first SLS/Orion mission, known as Artemis 1, will send the Orion spacecraft on a flight lasting at least 25 days in a distant orbit around the moon, then back to Earth. Lockheed Martin engineers at the Kennedy Space Center are readying the Orion capsule for Artemis 1, along with its European-built power and propulsion module.

The Artemis 2 mission, currently set for launch in 2022 or 2023, will be the first Orion flight around the moon with astronauts.

In the meantime, NASA and commercial partners will build and launch elements of the Gateway, a mini-space station in lunar orbit that will be a stopover and safe haven for astronauts on the way to the moon’s surface. </s> NASA has cleared the final hurdle in testing its Orion spacecraft with the completion of the Ascent Abort-2 (AA-2) flight test. The success marks an important milestone for the crew capsule that will put humans back on the moon, demonstrating its safety in an emergency abort scenario.

Launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station early Tuesday morning, AA-2 was designed to push the capsule's abort system to its limits with a full-stress test. While full results of the test are still to be revealed, the capsule was successfully jettisoned from the launch vehicle approximately 55 seconds post-launch. A briefing is currently scheduled for late Tuesday morning and is expected to reveal initial insights regarding the test data.

It was a humid morning in Florida but Orion, perched on top of a solid-fuel rocket and encased within a fairing assembly, launched just right on schedule at 7 a.m. The capsule used for the test operated like a dummy spacecraft, weighted to resemble the real thing, but in effect was just an Orion-shaped box. It was positioned at the bottom of the upside-down golf tee-shaped Launch Abort System (LAS).

As it launched, we didn't quite see the dazzling flurry of fire and flame we've become accustomed to with SpaceX launches but, of course, it wasn't meant to be that way. This was a small test lasting only 3 minutes, aimed at ticking off a fundamental crew safeguard of the moon-bound craft.

"Our Launch Abort System is a key safety feature of the spacecraft," said Orion program manager Mark Kirasich prior to the test. "It will protect the crew members who fly on-board Orion during the most challenging part of the mission, which is the ascent phase."

Less than a minute into the flight, the abort sequence was initiated. By that time, the spacecraft had reached Mach 1.3 and hit 31,000 feet in altitude, just a few thousand feet lower than most commercial airliners fly. At that point, the abort motor fired and the crew module blasted away from the launch vehicle escaping the chasing rocket before falling back to Earth. Once the LAS oriented itself in mid-flight, it ejected the Orion capsule into the ocean and blasted away. Orion did not contain any parachutes, so it came hurtling back towards the ocean and is set to sleep with the fishes.

NASA has already run a number of high-end computer simulations that aim to stress test the capsule to see how it fares during an abort. The data collected from the real flight will be analyzed in conjunction with those tests, thanks to a dozen data recorders that were jettisoned every ten seconds as Orion began free fall into the sea.

Ascent Abort-2 was the last of three tests designed to evaluate the Orion capsule. Although emergency aborts are rather rare in crewed rocket launches, one did occur earlier this year when a Russian Soyuz rocket malfunctioned during ascent. That emergency resulted in a ballistic descent for NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin. "We have to prepare for this even though its a low likelihood of happening," fellow astronaut Randy Bresnik noted in a pre-launch briefing.

The capsule is slated to fly, for the first time, aboard NASA's next-generation rocket, the Space Launch System, in July 2020. That first flight will be uncrewed and last for approximately 25 days, with the Orion capsule spending around 10 days in orbit around the moon. Success in that mission will pave the way for the Artemis program to ready itself for first human spaceflight missions in 2022. </s> If you would like to see more articles like this please support our coverage of the space program by becoming a Spaceflight Now Member . If everyone who enjoys our website helps fund it, we can expand and improve our coverage further.

A three-minute test flight Tuesday morning over Cape Canaveral will help ensure NASA’s Orion crew capsule — the vehicle being built to carry astronauts back to the moon — can safely escape from a catastrophic failure on launch.

The $256 million atmospheric test flight, named Orion Ascent Abort-2, is designed to demonstrate the spacecraft can get away from a rocket in flight, a key safety feature that would save the astronauts inside the capsule in the event of a launch failure.

On future missions with astronauts, the Orion spacecraft will lift off aboard NASA’s Space Launch System, a huge 322-foot-tall (98-meter) rocket that will propel crews toward the moon. Tuesday’s test flight will use a much smaller rocket that will barely exceed the typical cruising altitude of a commercial airliner.

“It’s a three-minute flight test, but it’s really the only full-scale system test that we have before we put crew on the vehicle, so it’s definitely critical for making sure that we can get the crew safely away in an emergency,” said Jenny Devolites, the Orion AA-2 test director from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

A boilerplate Orion capsule is set for launch during a four-hour window opening at 7 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT) Tuesday from Space Launch Complex 46, a seaside facility located near the easternmost point of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The capsule will launch aboard a single-stage solid-fueled booster taken from the U.S. Air Force’s stockpiles of decommissioned Peacekeeper missiles, which were developed to deliver nuclear warheads to distant targets.

The ascent abort test comes after a series of ground test-firings of the Orion abort system, and a flight test conducted in May 2010 to simulate an escape from an explosion on the launch pad.

The pad abort in 2010 flew with a prototype abort system. The ascent abort Tuesday will test a fully functioning abort apparatus, the same configuration to be relied upon by astronauts.

“This test is extremely important,” said Mark Kirasich, NASA’s Orion program manager. “In Orion, crew safety and spacecraft reliability are very high priorities for us, and our launch abort system is a key safety feature of the spacecraft. It will protect the crew members who fly on-board Orion. It will protect them during the most challenging part of the mission, which is the ascent phase.”

No astronauts will be on-board for Tuesday’s flight, but veteran space flier Randy Bresnik said Monday he is eager to see the results of the abort test.

“It’s certainly a very exciting test for us tomorrow,” Bresnik said. “It is so important because it’s the only one of its type in the dynamic flight environment, the environment where it’s going to be needed most.”

On a real space mission, the Orion spacecraft would command an abort automatically if sensors detected a malfunction in the launch vehicle. Astronauts riding on the spacecraft will also be able to manually initiate an abort, Bresnik said.

The emergency landing of Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin and NASA flight engineer Nick Hague after a failed Soyuz rocket launch in October 2018 illustrated the importance of a launch abort capability, Bresnik said.

“We have to prepare for this, even though it’s a low likelihood of happening,” Bresnik said. “It had been 35 years since anyone on the planet had to exercise their launch abort system (before the Soyuz abort last year).

“That was definitely a good message to all of us that this is serious stuff,” Bresnik said. “We need to be ready because it has ultimate consequences if it doesn’t (work).”

Ground crews at Cape Canaveral have stacked components for the AA-2 test flight at pad 46 since April, beginning with the raising of the surplus Peacekeeper missile booster provided by the Air Force. The Peacekeeper’s SR118 first stage will ignite with a half-million pounds of thrust and turn due east from pad 46 to climb into the atmosphere over the Atlantic Ocean.

Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems, formerly known as Orbital ATK, assembled the Orion test booster, adding avionics, sensors and an aerodynamic shell to the Peacekeeper stage. The same first stage is used by the Minotaur 4 satellite launcher, which is also assembled and launched by Northrop Grumman under contract to the Air Force.

Engineers installed ballast plates, a separation ring and a test model of the Orion capsule on top of the single-stage booster at pad 46, which was itself modified for the Orion abort test with the installation of two new lightning protection towers.

Before transferring the Orion vehicle to the launch pad, teams inside a processing facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center connect the capsule to its launch abort tower, a needle-shaped structure that extends above the spacecraft and contains three separate rocket motors, all fueled by pre-packed solid propellants.

Lockheed Martin, the Orion spacecraft’s prime contractor, oversees the development of the launch abort system.

The Orion capsule flying on the AA-2 test flight was fabricated at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia, and outfitted with wiring, sensors and other equipment at the Johnson Space Center in Houston before shipment to the Kennedy Space Center in December.

Forecasters at the Air Force’s 45th Weather Squadron predict a 70 percent chance of acceptable weather during Tuesday’s four-launch launch window. The main concern is with clouds that could obscure the view of the test by optical tracking cameras, a requirement for engineers to examine the performance of the abort system in flight.

The complete test vehicle weighs around 310,000 pounds, or approximately 140 metric tons.

After ignition of the SR118 booster rocket, the 93-foot-tall (28-meter) test vehicle will head east and climb to 31,000 feet (about 9,500 meters) before exhausting its propellant.

“The booster is going to give us about 500,000 pounds of thrust at liftoff in order to get us up to the right test condition at 31,000 feet,” Devolites said. “We actually had to add over 100,000 pounds of ballast to it just to slow it down, because it’s pretty sporty.”

The booster’s guidance system will aim to reach a predetermined set of conditions, such as speed, aerodynamic pressure and angle of attack, before the Orion capsule’s flight computer triggers the abort command 55 seconds after liftoff, at velocity of about Mach 1.3, or 1.3 times the speed of sound.

“When we get up to about 31,000 feet, we’ve got tremendous aerodynamic pressure on the vehicle, and we get a signal from the booster that we’ve reached the (test) condition, and it tells our flight computer and our flight software to initiate the abort,” Devolites said.

The Orion spacecraft’s Northrop Grumman-built abort motor, fitted with four fixed nozzles, will instantly ignite to pull the spacecraft away from the rocket.

“At that time we actually ignite the abort motor, which is about 400,000 pounds of thrust,” Devolites said. “It pulls about seven Gs, and it also ignites the attitude control motor that provides the steering. It rotates the vehicle around, re-orients it, and puts the heat shield forward for descent.”

In two seconds, the impulse from the abort motor will add nearly 500 mph (300 kilometers per hour) to the vehicle’s speed, according to Blake Watters, principal engineer for the launch abort system at Lockheed Martin.

The attitude control motor, also supplied by Northrop Grumman, is located at the top of the abort tower and features eight variable-thrust nozzles placed at 45-degree angles around the structure, each with the ability to independently controlled. The Orion’s computer will sense the vehicle’s orientation during the abort and send commands to the attitude control motor to move the position of pintles inside each nozzle to adjust thrust and keep the vehicle properly pointed.

The abort motor will fire for about 5 seconds, giving an additional boost of energy to the vehicle to reach a top speed of about Mach 1.5. The attitude control motor will re-orient the vehicle at about 43,000 feet (13,100 meters), then the abort system will separate from the capsule to fall into the ocean.

The abort system’s jettison motor is the only part of the assembly that will be used on every mission. On a normal launch, the jettison motor will ignite to push the abort tower off the rocket once it is out of the atmosphere.

Built by Aerojet Rocketdyne, the jettison motor produces around 40,000 pounds of thrust and will be the last part of the abort system to be used on the AA-2 test flight as the vehicle reaches a peak altitude of around 44,000 feet (13,400 meters).

“In an actual abort scenario, parachutes would deploy that slow the spacecraft down for a water landing, and then the crew returns safely to land,” Devolites said. “But for our flight test, we’re skipping the parachutes since those are being tested separately.”

NASA said disposing of the Orion test capsule, which is not designed to fly in space, makes the test flight less expensive and saved development time.

Twelve data recorders will release from the Orion capsule to fall into the Atlantic Ocean, where boats will be on standby to retrieve them for analysis. Nearly 900 temperature, acoustic and pressure sensors are flying on the test vehicle to record information in flight.

“We have two separate pods, they’re actually military flare dispensers, and they had six recorders in each one, and we eject them in pairs every 10 seconds,” said Don Reed, launch director for the AA-2 mission, in an interview with Spaceflight Now. “So 20 seconds after the LAS (launch abort system) jettisons from the crew module, we start ejecting, so the first pair comes out 20 seconds after the LAS is jettisoned, and then every 10 seconds until all 12 are ejected.”

The capsule will impact the the sea at 300 mph (480 kilometers per hour) around 7 miles (11 kilometers) offshore, and is designed to sink to the ocean floor, according to Reed.

The data recorders provide a backup to telemetry data transmitted back to the ground by the vehicle in flight. In the event ground teams to not receive telemetry data in flight, NASA only needs to recover one of the data recorders. Reed said retrieved all of the devices during a rehearsal last year.

A NASA WB-57 jet will also be flying over Cape Canaveral to record optical tracking imagery during the Orion abort test, officials said.

The Orion abort system is similar in appearance to the escape system flown on the Saturn 5 rocket during the Apollo program some 50 years ago. One major difference is the Orion abort system has a maneuverable attitude control motor to fully govern the vehicle’s trajectory after an abort, while the Apollo spacecraft had a non-vectoring “pitch” motor to send the capsule in one direction during a launch escape event.

Space shuttle crews had no ability to use an abort rocket to escape a catastrophic failure during launch.

The new commercial crew capsules developed by Boeing and SpaceX to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station both have “pusher” escape systems, employing liquid-fueled rocket engines along the rear circumference of the vehicles to propel astronauts away from a launcher in an emergency.

NASA selected Lockheed Martin to begin developing the Orion spacecraft in 2006 under the auspices of the space agency’s now-defunct Constellation program, which started under the George W. Bush administration in the aftermath of the loss of the shuttle Columbia and its seven-person crew in 2003.

After the Columbia accident, the Bush White House directed NASA to end the shuttle program after completing the International Space Station, allowing the agency to re-focus on deep space exploration, with an objective of returning humans to the moon’s surface by 2020.

But the Constellation program ran into numerous delays and cost estimates crew, prompting President Obama to cancel the program in 2010. A year later, the White House and Congress agreed on a new strategy for NASA, salvaging work already completed on the Orion program and kicking off development of a new rocket called the Space Launch System for eventual missions to Mars.

The Orion and Space Launch System programs have encountered more difficulties since 2011, delaying the first launch of an unpiloted version of the crew capsule on the SLS from 2017 until no earlier than late 2020, or more likely some time in 2021.

NASA and Lockheed Martin conducted an Orion test flight in Earth orbit in December 2014 to test the capsule’s heat shield at the speeds it will encounter on re-entry from the moon. Engineers also conducted the Orion pad abort test in 2010 and a series of parachute drop tests.

NASA has spent around $16 billion on the Orion program since its start, according to Laura Forczyk, a space policy analyst. The SLS program has cost around $14 billion to date, she said earlier this year.

The Orion and SLS programs form the core of NASA’s newly-announced Artemis program, which will attempt to land astronauts on the moon by 2024, responding to a directive from the Trump administration.

The first SLS/Orion mission, now designated Artemis 1, will send the Orion spacecraft on a flight lasting at least 25 days in a distant orbit around the moon, then back to Earth. Lockheed Martin engineers at the Kennedy Space Center are readying the Orion capsule for Artemis 1, along with its European-built power and propulsion module.

The Artemis 2 mission, currently set for launch in 2022 or 2023, will be the first Orion flight around the moon with astronauts.

In the meantime, NASA and commercial partners will build and launch elements of the Gateway, a mini-space station in lunar orbit that will be a stopover and safe haven for astronauts on the way to the moon’s surface.

NASA’s planned flight sequence would make the Artemis 3 mission the first opportunity to conduct a lunar landing with astronauts in 2024. But the schedule assumes no more delays and full funding of the moon landing initiative by Congress, which NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told CNN last month will cost some $20 billion to $30 billion over the next five years, on top of the agency’s previously-planned budget. </s> NASA has completed a key test in preparing for its planned crewed space mission to return to the Moon, successfully testing the Launch Abort System (LAS for short) for its Orion spacecraft.

This is the first full stress test of the LAS, which involved launching both an Orion test craft and the full LAS system aboard a rocket booster (smaller scale than would be used to propel the Orion craft to orbit). The goal was to show that in the case of an emergency during an actual launch, the abort system could do its intended job and jettison the Orion crew craft to a safe distance away from the rocket, very quickly.

During this test, there obviously wasn’t anyone on board, but the demonstration still seems to have gone off as planned – the booster shot the Orion and LAS up about 31,000 feet into the air, or about cruising height for commercial aircraft. At its target height, the abort system fired its own abort motor, which separates the crew module from the rocket with about 400,000 pounds of thrust.

This is designed to throw the Orion crew module clear of any potential explosion in the case of an emergency during the time the actual launch rocket is at ‘max-Q’, or the point during launch when it’s under the most stress from aerodynamic forces during the launch sequence.

As you can see above, the LAS managed to separate successfully, then turn around as planned to correctly orient the Orion test vehicle, and then separate itself from the crew capsule. The crew capsule then ejected its own onboard data recorders to provide NASA engineers with the detailed flight records they need to ensure everything went as intended with the LAS test.

The LAS is a new component of NASA’s crew launch system designed for Orion and will help to ensure that this is the safest rocket launch system ever designed by NASA. It can activate in mere milliseconds and move the crew component of the spacecraft away from the rocket at a much higher velocity than even the rocket itself can move. </s> CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Should NASA’s Orion spacecraft encounter a problem when it is used to send astronauts to the Moon one day, the system tasked with keeping them safe has proven it can do so. The test was dubbed – Ascent Abort 2.

It didn’t take long for NASA and Northrop Grumman, the manufacturer of the Peacekeeper missile used for this morning’s test, to complete the mission. The flight only lasted about three minutes. The “payload” that was launched at 7 a.m. EDT (11:00 GMT) was an Orion test article which was sent skyward from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 46.

The vehicle wasn’t bound for the Moon or even to orbit for that matter. In fact it only reached an altitude of about six miles (almost 10 kilometers) less than one-tenth the distance required to cross the Kármán line, the altitude where space begins. That height however did place it in a region where it encountered “high-stress aerodynamic conditions” that Orion should encounter when launched.

During this morning’s test, an abort was conducted and resulted in a successful demonstration of Orion’s abort system. According to NASA: “The abort sequence triggered and, within milliseconds, the abort motor fired to pull the crew module away from the rocket. Its attitude control motor flipped the capsule end-over-end to properly orient it, and then the jettison motor fired, releasing the crew module for splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean.”

Twelve data recorders were ejected as the capsule descended down to the Atlantic. Engineers will now study that information and determine what changes, if any, need to be made.

The “stack”, the combined booster and spacecraft used during the July 2 test, is comprised of the following:

The tower-like abort structure consists of two parts: the fairing assembly, which is a shell composed of a lightweight composite material that protects the capsule from the heat, air flow and acoustics of the launch, ascent, and abort environments; and the launch abort tower, which includes the abort motor, attitude control motor, and jettison motor.

“Launching into space is one of the most difficult and dangerous parts of going to the Moon,” said Mark Kirasich, Orion program manager at Johnson Space Center in Houston. “This test mimicked some of the most challenging conditions Orion will ever face should an emergency develop during the ascent phase of flight. Today, the team demonstrated our abort capabilities under these demanding conditions and put us one huge step closer to the first Artemis flight carrying people to the Moon.”

Orion was originally called the Crew Exploration Vehicle developed under President George W. Bush’s “Vision for Space Exploration.” When Barack Obama was elected, that initiative was cancelled with only the Space Launch System (formerly known as the Ares V) and Orion surviving. Upon President Trump’s election in 2016 as the 45th president of the United States a similar program was established under the Artemis Program.

Another Orion test article was launched on a three-orbit long, 3,604 mile (5,800 kilometer) high flight test in 2014 on the Exploration Flight Test 1 mission.

“We’re building the most powerful rocket in the world to send astronauts to the Moon in the Orion spacecraft for Artemis missions,” said Bill Hill, deputy associate administrator for Exploration Systems Development at NASA Headquarters via an agency-issued release. “With this exploration system designed to safely carry humans farther into space than ever before, we’ll also have an equally powerful launch abort system that will pull the crew away if there is a problem with the rocket during the early portion of ascent.” </s> MELBOURNE, Fla. - Early Tuesday morning, spectators along the Space Coast will get the chance to witness a historic moment as NASA attempts to get one step closer to returning American astronauts to the moon.

At the opening of a four-hour window beginning at 7 a.m. Tuesday, teams will test the launch abort system for the Orion spacecraft, the capsule designed to carry astronauts to lunar orbit.

The demo version of the capsule will be launched atop a test booster, Minotaur IV, provided by Northrop Grumman at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 46.

This brief, uncrewed flight test is unlike other launches that have occurred this year: instead of regular launches that send spacecraft to orbit, Tuesday's launch will not exit Earth's atmosphere.

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Instead, during the three-minute test, the spacecraft will blast off to an altitude of about six miles while traveling at a speed of over 1,000 mph. From there, the system's abort motor will fire and pull the spacecraft away from the booster within milliseconds, as it would in an emergency situation during a regular crewed flight.
• A test version of the crew module will launch atop the Minotaur IV rocket from Launch Complex 46.
• Fifty-five seconds after launch, the abort sequence will initiate at an altitude of 31,000 feet.
• At this point, the abort motor will fire with 400,000 pounds of thrust, pulling the crew module away from the booster.
• From there, the altitude control motor will reorient the launch abort system to be able to safely separate from the crew module.
• Once the jettison motor fires, the system will separate from the crew module.
• Lastly, the onboard data recorders for the launch will separate from the capsule, ending the test.
• The crew module will splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean.

"Timing is crucial as the abort events must match the abort timing requirements of the Orion spacecraft to the millisecond in order for the flight test data to be valid," according to NASA.

Weather conditions look fine for NASA's Ascent Abort-2 test, calculated by the Air Force at 70% "go" for launch.

"The primary concern will be nearshore cloud coverage, which may hamper the view of the optical trackers," according to the 45th Weather Squadron.

In the event of a delay, conditions improve slightly to 80% "go" on Wednesday.

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Tuesday's launch marks a critical milestone for NASA as the agency prepares to send humans back to the moon within the next five years.

The 22,000-pound test version of Orion must demonstrate the capsule's capability of activating its abort system, steering the spacecraft and being able to carry the astronauts to a safe distance in the event of an emergency during liftoff.

The data retrieved from this test will help teams improve computer models for the spacecraft launch abort system's performance and functions, an important feature necessary in ensuring the astronauts' safety.

"The test paves the way for Artemis 2, the first flight of astronauts aboard Orion and the powerful new Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on a mission to carry humans around the moon for the first time in half a century," according to NASA.

NASA is planning on sending American men and women to the south pole of the moon by 2024 under the program name Artemis, the Greek goddess of the moon and twin sister of Apollo.

The agency plans to use the Orion capsule, designed by Lockheed Martin, which is also intended to carry astronauts to Mars and other deep-space missions, as well as the Boeing-made Space Launch System, or SLS rocket currently under development for lunar missions.

NASA hopes to have an initial uncrewed flight test, known as Artemis 1, around the moon by next year, but the U.S. Government Accountability Office said that date could slip into the following year.

The first crewed flight test, or Artemis 2, would follow in 2022 and would be a lunar flyby mission. If schedules hold, by 2024 Artemis 3 would once again have American astronauts on the lunar surface.

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Tuesday's launch will not be Orion's first test mission, however. The capsule previously launched to space atop United Launch Alliance's Delta IV Heavy rocket in December 2014 for Exploration Flight Test-1. The uncrewed flight tested the capsule's heat shield to determine the conditions the spacecraft would face when returning from deep-space missions.

Also in 2010, an earlier version of Orion's launch abort system was successfully tested to evaluate the performance of the system from the launch pad during the Pad Abort Test-1 mission at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

"AA-2 provides the only opportunity to test a fully active launch abort system during ascent before flying crew, so verifying that it works as predicted in the event of an emergency is a critical step for deep space exploration," NASA said.
NASA carries out a successful in-flight test of the launch abort system of its new Orion spacecraft, a milestone in the development of the Artemis program to resume human exploration beyond low Earth orbit.