Tag: Spaceflight

Short circuits on Mars and mapping asteroids

Posted on by Inara Pey

CuriosityFollowing my last Curiosity update, which noted that other than for one potential drilling / sampling target, work was wrapping-up for the Mars Science Laboratory in the “Pahrump Hills” location on the lower slopes of “Mount Sharp”, the decision was taken to indeed gather one more sample.

The selected target had been dubbed “Telegraph Peak”, and sits towards the top end of “Pahrump Hills”. It was selected because Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) measurements carried out by the rover during its 5-month “walkabout” in “Pahrump Hills” revealed the rocks in the area to be relatively enriched in silicon when compared to the corresponding amounts of aluminium and magnesium, which is somewhat different to rocks sample prior to the rover arrival at the basal slops of “Mount Sharp”. This enrichment has also shown to increase the further up the slopes of “Pahrump Hills” the rover climbed, which is of interest to the science team.

“When you graph the ratios of silica to magnesium and silica to aluminium, ‘Telegraph Peak’ is toward the end of the range we’ve seen,” Curiosity co-investigator Doug Ming explains. “It’s what you would expect if there has been some acidic leaching. We want to see what minerals are present where we found this chemistry.”

Sampling took place on February 24th, 2015 (PDT) or Sol 908 for the rover on Mars. For the first time in Curiosity’s time on Mars, it was carried out with no preliminary “mini-drill” operation. Instead, the science team judged that analysis of the rock by APXS indicted it was of a very similar nature to the previous two sample drilling sites in “Pahrump Hills”, and the new lower percussion drilling capabilities the rover now has were judged as sufficiently safe enough to go ahead with a direct sample gathering operation.

How the drill works: On the left, a view of the drill mechanism mounted on the rover's turret, with the drill bit centre bottom. On the right a cutaway showing the sample collection mechanism in the drill bit
How the drill works: On the left, a view of the drill mechanism mounted on the rover’s turret, with the drill bit centre bottom. On the right a cutaway showing the sample collection mechanism in the drill bit

As I’ve covered previously in these pages, obtaining a sample for analysis is a multi-part operation. First the rock is drilled, and a core sample forced up through the drill bit into a one of two sample collection chambers at the top of the drill mechanism. From here, the sample is “shaken” through a feed to another device in the rover’s robot arm turret called CHIMRA – the Collection and Handling for In-Situ Martian Rock Analysis system, used to separate the tailings through a series of sieves, ready for different sizes of sample grains to be passed through the the rover’s on-board laboratory systems.

Both of these operations require the use of the drill’s percussive system to vibrate the turret, forcing material both from the drill’s sample collection chamber and through CHIMRA. However, on February 27th, during the initial operation to move the sample tailings from the drill chamber to CHIMRA, Curiosity’s on-board fault protect system identified a transient short circuit within the robot arm’s electronics. The immediately resulted in all arm-related activities being shut down, and the arm and turret locked into position ready for diagnostic operations to commence.

A transient short can occur for a number of reasons, and can pass without significant problems. However, it may also indicate a potential issue which might require some measure of action, such as a change in operating procedures or a restriction on how a mechanism is used, in order to avoid the issue becoming a serious problem in the future. To this end, following the fault report, mission engineers started diagnosing the problem, with almost all rover operations halted while they did so.

A monochrome image from Curiosity’s Navigation Camera (Navcam) shows the position in which the rover held its arm for several days after a transient short circuit triggered on-board fault-protection programming to halt arm activities on February 27th, 2015 PDT, the 911th Sol of the rover’s work on Mars.

On Thursday, March 5th, as a part of the investigative process, the rover was commanded to carry out a series of vibration tests of the kind performed while forcing the transfer of samples from the drill to CHIMRA. The vibrations were carried out with the robot arm and turret in the same orientation and position which caused the initial triggering of the fault protection system, and in the third of 180 repeat motions, a similar transient short occurred, lasting less than one one-hundredth of a second, enough to trigger the rover’s fault protection systems, and confirming there does appear to be some kind of electrical issue.

Tests are now under-way to determine whether or not the short will occur with the turret in different orientations, and may be followed by additional tests to see if it occurs with the arm in different positions. If no shorting occurs with either a change in the orientation or position of the turret / arm, then the most obvious step in preventing any recurrence of the issue is to avoid placing the turret / arm in the same orientation for sample transfer operations during future drilling activities.

It is hoped that the tests can be completed in the course of the next week. If they show that operations can be resumed safely, it is anticipated that the sample transfer operations will be completed, and Curiosity will then be ready to resume its climb up “Mount Sharp”, leaving “Pahrump Hills” via a narrow valley the science team have dubbed “Artist’s Drive”.

Continue reading “Short circuits on Mars and mapping asteroids” →

Avatars on Mars, Falcons in Florida and oceans in space

Posted on by Inara Pey

CuriosityCuriosity, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), has been wrapping things up in the “Pahrump Hills” region at the base of “Mount Sharp”, the mountain-sized mound of deposited material occupying the centre of Gale Crater.

For the last several months, the rover has been engaged on what geologists on Earth call a “walkabout”, zigzagging back and forth across the area, looking for targets of interest for follow-up investigations, and allow the science team to better understand the geology and form of the region.

This method of activity is a change from how Curiosity has largely operated to date, which has seen the rover primarily move from point-to-point along its route, only re-visiting sites as a part of its onward movement towards the goal of reaching and climbing “Mount Sharp” (such as when travelling into, and then back out of the “Glenelg” and “Yellowknife Bay” regions Curiosity first explored in 2012 / 2013).

Curiosity's wandering through
Curiosity’s wandering through “Pahrump Hills”, which started with one of the tree lines into the region at the top of the image

In this respect, and as Aileen Yingst, the Deputy Principal Investigator with the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on the rover, describes, Curiosity has been demonstrating just how much of an avatar it is for the science team, allowing them to careful investigate, examine and catalogue “Pahrump Hills” in a rich, practical way using the very human technique of the “walkabout”, which will serve the mission well as the ascent up “Mount Sharp” continues.

Most recently, and since collecting samples from “Mojave 2″, the area of rock displaying interesting crystalline elements within it, Curiosity has been looking at an area geologists dubbed “pink cliffs”, which shows further signs of the crystalline structures, and might be a candidate for further investigation. If so, it will be the last stopping point in “Pahrump Hills” before Curiosity continues its climb up “Mount Sharp”.

Oppy Reaches 11

January 25th, 2015 saw NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, reach it’s eleventh anniversary on Mars. The rover, one of two MER vehicles, arrived on Mars at January 25th, 2004 (Universal Time), ready to start a mission initially planned to last just 90 days.

Since then, and up to its anniversary, “Oppy” has travelled a distance of some 41.7 kilometres (25.9 miles). While this doesn’t sound that much (and in truth, a human science team could have travelled that far in just a few days, including time for any science carried out along the way), remember that “Oppy’s” forward speed is measured in centimetres per hour.

As one of two solar-powered MER rovers (the second, Spirit having finally succumbed to the hostile environment on Mars around March 215th, 2011), Opportunity has carried out an incredible amount of work, and greatly contributed to our understanding of the planet, returning compelling evidence about wet environments on ancient Mars.

A panoramic view of Endeavour Crater as seen from “Cape Tribulation” an uprising close to the crater’s rim, the summit of which Opportunity reach in January 2015, marking its 11th anniversary on Mars (click for full size)

The rover marked its anniversary by reaching the summit of “Cape Tribulation”, an uprising close to the rim of 20 kilometre (13.7 mile) wide Endeavour Crater, which the rover has been gradually circumnavigating. This involved a change in elevation for “Oppy” of about 135 metres (440 feet), and afforded it a panoramic view of the crater and the land around it, presenting a unique opportunity for geological observations of the crater and its rim.

 A New Mars Mystery

That night, too, there was another jetting out of gas from the distant planet. I saw it … That night another invisible missile started on its way to the earth from Mars, just a second or so under twenty-four hours after the first one.

– The narrator, H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds

Okay, so it’s unlikely to be the sign of an impending invasion of Martians possibly ticked-of at the way we’re cluttering-up their planet with our probes and landers and rovers, but recent events high in the atmosphere of Mars have given rise to some excitement.

The images, originally capture in 2012, show huge plumes rising some 250 kilometres (156 miles) into the most tenuous reaches of Mars’ thin atmosphere.

Martian high-altitude plumes
Martian high-altitude plumes (image: ESA)

The plumes occurred on two separate occasions in March and April 2012, and were spotted by amateur astronomers. Each time, they developed with relative rapidity, rising upwards and outwards to cover areas of some 1000 x 500 kilometres (625 x 312.5 miles) in a period of around 10 hours before remaining visible for up to 10 days at a time, their structure and form changing on a daily basis.

Unfortunately, neither event was seen from orbit about Mars, occurring so high on the planet’s limb as to be effectively out-of-sight for the NASA and ESA orbital vehicles, and by the time word had spread sufficiently about the observations, the events were largely over.

However, investigations into images of the planet taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in orbit around the Earth have revealed similar plumes being imaged in the past. However, with the exception of an image captured in 1997, none have been anywhere near as high or dramatic as the 2012 events.

So what might have caused this plumes to occur? The answer to that question is uncertain.

Continue reading “Avatars on Mars, Falcons in Florida and oceans in space” →

IXV paves the way for PRIDE and more

Posted on by Inara Pey
An artist's impression of ESA's IXV lifting body attached to its upper sage booster during its first sub-orbital flight
An artist’s impression of ESA’s IXV lifting body attached to its upper sage booster during its first sub-orbital flight

On Wednesday, February 11th, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched a Vega rocket from their Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana, South America. The rocket has been Europe’s launch system for lightweight payloads since 2012, and in this capacity it has generally been used to lift Earth observation mission payloads into polar orbits, where they can see as much of the Earth’s surface as the planet rotates beneath them.

The February 11th mission was different, however. This was launched due west, out over the Atlantic and directly towards Africa. And, rather than carrying a satellite, the rocket carried a new, experimental spaceplane, very unglamorously called IXV,  for Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle.

Dubbed a “mini-shuttle” by some in the media, IXV is more correctly a lifting body design. That is, it has no wings of any description. Instead, it uses its own aerodynamic shape to generate lift and stability during re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. This particular principle of flight isn’t new. Lifting body designs have been used for a number of experimental purposes over the years, including in the 1960s and 1970s as NASA investigated potential designs for a reusable space vehicle (although the evolving mission requirements for the space shuttle meant that a lifting body design was eventually rejected in favour of a delta wing configuration).

The IXV mission
The IXV mission

In popular culture, and for those old enough to remember, footage of the crash and disintegration of a lifting body piloted by Bruce Peterson, was used in the opening titles of the TV series The Six Million Dollar Man. Unlike the fictional Steve Austin, however, Peterson survived his crash without the aid of bionics, although he did lose his sight in one eye … courtesy of an infection which occurred while he was in hospital after the crash. More recently, the use of a lifting body approach has been been demonstrated by Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser vehicle, which had been intended to fly crews to and from the International Space Station.

Europe’s IXV is an uncrewed vehicle, weighing just under 2 tonnes. It’s primary objective is to research the re-entry and flight characteristics of such a vehicle shape and to test the re-entry shielding technologies that ESA are developing. All of this is with a view to developing a new generation of reusable space vehicles that could be employed for both crewed and uncrewed missions. The first of these is likely to be PRIDE – the Programme for Reusable In-orbit Demonstrator in Europe – a genuine spaceplane using a combination lifting body / winged design.

ESA's PRIDE aims to demonstrate the use of a reusable spaceplane in satellite launch operations
ESA’s PRIDE aims to demonstrate the use of a reusable spaceplane in satellite launch operations

PRIDE is designed to be launched atop a rocket and, once in orbit, deploy satellite payloads prior to returning to Earth for a conventional runway landing, refurbishment and reuse. In this, it would be somewhat similar to the US Air Force’s uncrewed and classified X-37B spaceplane, which is capable of long duration orbital flights, notching-up some 1,367 days in space in just 3 missions between 2010 and 2014. However, unlike the X-37 programme, which is believed to be both an advanced technologies test vehicle and potentially capable of undertaking reconnaissance activities when in orbit, PRIDE would be a purely civilian operation.

Another potential use for the technologies seen in IXV is in providing the means to operate reusable boosters as a part of Europe’s next generation of launch vehicles, which would be capable of flying themselves back to a safe landing after use. Lifting body technologies and the re-entry systems used on IXV might also be used in missions to returns samples from Mars and the asteroids to Earth, and spaceplane technologies in general might one day form a part of ESA’s strategy for ferrying crews to / from orbital space facilities in the future.

The technologies being tested by IXV may one day be used in reusable boosters forming a part of ESA's next generation of launchers
The technologies being tested by IXV may one day be used in reusable boosters forming a part of ESA’s next generation of launchers

IXV’s maiden flight was relatively short – just under 2 hours in duration – and sub-orbital in nature. Boosted to an altitude of around 450 kilometres (281 miles), the vehicle cruised over Africa prior to initiating re-entry through the Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of some 7.5 kilometres per second (just under 16,800 miles per hour), using its shape to generate lift and stability, and two tail-mounted “paddles” for steering. Once through the heat of re-entry and slowed to hypersonic speeds, a special parachute deployed to slow the vehicle to subsonic speeds. This allowed the main parachute system could be deployed, which brought the car-sized vehicle to a relatively “soft” splashdown at just 7 metres a second (12.5 mph), so it could be recovered by the vessel Nos Aries.

The entire mission, from launch to splashdown, occurred almost precisely on schedule. Only a slight delay prior to lift-off causing the schedule to be adjusted. Ironically, recovery of the vehicle following splashdown took almost as along as the mission itself, and an overcast sky in the recovery zone presented images being captured of the vehicle’s descent by parachute.

Nevertheless, the mission was a great success. Now begins a long trawl through the data gathered by some 300 instruments and sensors spread throughout and over the little spaceplane.

All images and video, courtesy of the European Space Agency

“I spy with my big eye…” and landing a rocket on Earth

Posted on by Inara Pey

CuriosityNASA’s Curiosity rover has been a busy bunny on Mars. Currently still parked in the “Pahrump Hills” terrain on the lower slopes of “Mount Sharp”, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover has now completed its latest drilling activity, collecting samples from a rock dubbed “Mojave 2”.

This isn’t actually the rock from which the science team had originally hoped to gather samples. That rock, dubbed “Mojave” broke apart as a result of the percussive action of the rover’s drill during a “mini-drill” test. As a result, the rock was ruled out as a sample gathering target. “Mojave” was of particularly interest to scientists as Curiosity had images tiny, rice-grain sized crystalline minerals that might have resulted from evaporation of a drying lake, thus presenting the science team with a further insight into environmental conditions within Gale Crater.

To counter this loss, the team relocated Curiosity to  “Mojave 2”, another rock within the same outcrop as “Mojave”, and which exhibits similar crystalline features. In doing so, the team were able to bring into play software improvements only recently uploaded to the rover as a part of an overall systems upgrade, which was deployed to one of the rover’s two computer systems at the end of January.

The software improvements for the drill are the result of investigations into the fracturing of a rock during a previous attempt to obtain samples prior to the rover arriving on “Mount Sharp”. Like an Earth-based hammer drill, the rover’s drill uses a percussive action, so that as well as drilling into a rock, the drill bit effectively hammers its way into the rock. In all, there are six settings governing the amount of percussive energy used during drilling, which range from a gentle tapping (level 1) through to hammering at the rate of 30 times a second with a 20-fold increase in energy imparted (level 6).

During early drilling operations the software monitoring these percussion settings “learned” that defaulting to the “level 4” setting best met the needs of gathering samples in the harder rock types the rover initially encountered. However, this was proving too forceful for the softer rocks closer to, and on, “Mount Sharp”, but the software was unable to switch down to a lower setting.

The drill hopes on "Mojave 2" captured by Curiosity's Mastcam. Towards the top is the small, "mini drilling" test bore, just a couple of centimetres deep, created on Sol 881 (January 28th, 2015, PDT) and some 10 centimetres below it, the sample-gathering bore hole, some 6.5 centimetres deep, cut on Sol 882 (January 29th, 2015, PDT).
The drill holes on “Mojave 2” captured by Curiosity’s Mastcam. Towards the top is the small, “mini drilling” test bore, just a couple of centimetres deep, created on Sol 881 (January 28th, 2015, PDT) and some 10 centimetres below it, the sample-gathering bore hole, some 6.5 centimetres deep, cut on Sol 882 (January 29th, 2015, PDT).

The new update causes the drill software to reset to “level 1” after each drilling operation, and then step through the levels incrementally until the ideal is found. As a result, a sample was gathered from “Mojave 2” without the drill needing to step beyond the “level 2” percussion action.

Drilling operations on “Mojave 2” took place on Sol 881 and Sol 882 (January 28th and 29th, PDT, respectively). As per standard operating procedure, the first drilling operation was a test “mini drilling” to see how the rock responded to encroachment and cutting. The second, which took the dill to a depth of around 6.5 centimetres (2.6 inches). The gathered samples were then sifted and sorted through the CHIMRA system in the rover’s turret, prior to being transferred via the surface scoop to Curiosity’s primary laboratory systems, ChemMin and SAM.

At the same time as Curiosity was carrying out its initial analysis of the “Mojave 2” rock, NASA released an image captured by the HiRise (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) carried aboard the orbiting Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which forms the mainstay of the rover’s communications with Earth. The image, which was taken on December 13th, 2014, reveals Curiosity mid-way through its “walkabouts” in “Pahrump Hills”, when it was seeking potential targets of interest for further study.

While not the first time the rover has been imaged from orbit, this is one of the clearest pictures from the rover yet capture from an altitude of around 280 kilometres (175 miles) above the surface of Mars.

"I see you!" - MRO's HiRise image of the curiosity rover, obtained on December 13th, 2014, as the rover explores the "Pahrump Hills" region on a basal slopes of "Mount Sharp"
“I see you!” – MRO’s HiRise image of the curiosity rover, obtained on December 13th, 2014, as the rover explores the “Pahrump Hills” region on a basal slopes of “Mount Sharp”

Initial results from ChemMin (the Chemical and Mineralogy) instrumental has shown that the rock was likely effected by water that was much more acidic in nature than evidenced through the analysis of other rock samples obtained by the rover. The still-partial analysis shows a significant amount of jarosite, an oxidized mineral containing iron and sulphur that forms in acidic environments. This raises the question of whether the more acidic water was part of environmental conditions when sediments were being deposited to form “Mount Sharp”, or the result of fluids soaking the rocks at a later time.

ChemMin was also unable to identify a clear candidate mineral for the crystalline deposits which first attracted the science team to the outcrop; this presents the possibility that the minerals responsible for originally forming the crystals may have been leached away over time and replaced by other minerals during later periods of wet environmental conditions.

It is hoped that SAM – the Sample Analysis at Mars – suite of instruments may be able to reveal more about the nature and composition of the samples once they have completed their round of analysis. Depending on the outcome of this work, Curiosity may be ordered to gather a further rock sample from “Pahrump Hills”, or may be ordered to continue upwards and into new territory on “Mount Sharp”.

Continue reading ““I spy with my big eye…” and landing a rocket on Earth” →

The Beagle had landed

Posted on by Inara Pey
An artist's impression of Beagle 2 on Mars (credit: European Space Agency)
An artist’s impression of Beagle 2 on Mars (credit: European Space Agency)

In June 2003 the European Space Agency launched a pair of vehicles to Mars. The larger of the two, an orbiter vehicle called Mars Express, is still in operation today, albeit often overlooked by the media in favour of its American cousins also in orbit around the Red Planet.  The other vehicle, piggybacking on Mars Express, was a tiny lander (quite literally, being just 39 inches across) called Beagle 2.

Designed to search for signs of life, past or present on Mars, Beagle 2 was the Mission That Almost Never Was, because at the time it was proposed, no-one outside of those wanting to build it, wanted it. And yet, even today, the science package it did eventually take to Mars is one of the most remarkable feats of science engineering put together, with capabilities that will not be repeated until NASA flies their one tonne Mars 2020 mission at the start of the next decade.

Sadly, for all its innovation and despite overcoming the odds to actually fly to Mars, Beagle 2 never achieved its goals; all contact was lost on the very day it was due to land on the Red Planet, December 25th, 2003. What happened to it remained a mystery for twelve years, but on Friday, January 16th, members of the Beagle 2 team were able to reveal that the fate of the plucky little lander was now known.

The Beagle 2 story begins in April 1997, when the European Space Agency held a meeting to discuss the possibility of flying an orbiter mission to Mars in 2003, following the failure of an earlier mission. This new mission would be called “Mars Express”, both in recognition of the exceptionally short lead-time to develop and fly it, even using instruments and systems developed for the failed mission, and for the fact that in 2003, Earth and Mars would be the closest they’ve been for some 60,000 years, allowing anything launched around the middle of that year to reach Mars in a comparatively short time.

Colin Pillinger, the man very much at the centre of Beagle 2, and who brought the mission to the public eye
Colin Pillinger, the man very much at the centre of Beagle 2, and who brought the mission to the public eye

Professor Colin Pillinger, a planetary scientist and a founder of the Open University’s prestigious Planetary Science Research Institute (since merged with the OU’s Department of Physics and Astronomy), attended the meeting together with his wife Judith, also a planetary scientist. At the time, Professor Pillinger was one of a number of scientists involved in investigating whether or not biogenic features had been discovered in a meteorite found in Antarctica, but which had originated on Mars.

This particular debate was focused on a piece of rock called ALH84001, regarded as one of the oldest pieces of the Solar System, being just over 4 billion years old, and which formed at a time when Mars was likely a warm wet planet. It had been raging for a year with no sign of abating, and Professor Pillinger had already come to the conclusion that one way to settled it would be to put a life sciences package actually on Mars.  He realised the proposed Mars Express mission presented the perfect opportunity for doing so, as did his wife. So much so, that by the time they got back to the UK, she had the perfect name for a mission designed to seek out evidence of life on Mars: Beagle 2, named for the vessel commanded by Captain Robert FitzRoy that carried Charles Darwin on his seminal voyage of discovery.

The microscopic structures revealed by a scanning electron microscope deep within a fragment of ALH84001 that suggested biogenic origins
One of the microscopic structures revealed by a scanning electron microscope deep within a fragment of ALH84001 that suggested biogenic origins

Given all of the controversy surrounding ALH84001 and the question of possible microbial life on Mars that dated back to the Viking Lander experiments of the 1990s, you’d think the ESA would jump at the opportunity to put a life sciences mission on Mars. Not so; for one thing, others also saw Mars Express as an opportunity to fly their projects to Mars and were busy lobbying. More to the point, it was held that the 6-year time frame for developing a lander mission from scratch was too short.

However, Colin Pillinger was not one to be deterred. In the UK he brought together a team from academia and industry, including Doctor Mark Sims, who was to prove pivotal in the  engineering design of the lander. With many of those involved in the nascent project initially working on it entirely in their own time, Beagle 2 rapidly developed from a series of rough designs “on the backs of beer mats”, to a proposal which, when presented to ESA managers, so impressed them, they provisionally agreed to the idea of flying a lander to Mars – but only if the UK was able to fund it. No money would be forthcoming from ESA.

Dr. Mark Sims of the University of Leiceter, who lead the engineering team responsible for Beagle 2, seen with another model of the lander (image: University of Leicester)
Dr. Mark Sims of the University of Leicester, who lead the engineering team responsible for Beagle 2, seen with another model of the lander (image: University of Leicester)

Thus began one of the most remarkable public relations exercises in annals of space history, with Beagle 2 becoming a household name in the UK, as Colin Pillinger sought to promote in on television, the radio, through newspaper and magazines, and giving public presentations. Space advocacy groups were rallied to the cause, celebrities were brought in to add their weight to things, Parliament and industry were lobbied and won over. In the end, the entire £44 million (US $70 million) was raised, with 50% coming from the UK government and the rest from the private sector.

Continue reading “The Beagle had landed” →

The human adventure is just beginning

Posted on by Inara Pey
Orion EFT-1 lifts-off exactly on time, 12:05 UTC, on Friday, December 5th, 2014
Orion EFT-1 (Exploration Flight Test 1) lifts-off exactly on time, 12:05 UT, on Friday, December 5th, 2014

Friday, December 5th marked what will hopefully be the first genuine step humans take in exploring the high frontier of space without total reliance upon robot vehicles. It came in the form of the launch, at 12:05 UT, of the first space vehicle in over forty years to be specifically designed to carry a crew beyond the limits of low Earth orbit and out into the depths of the solar system: the Orion Multi-purpose Crew Vehicle.

Originally, the lift-off had been planned for Thursday, December 4th. However, a series of incidents involving a small boat compromising the range safety exclusion zone, difficult winds over the launch pad, and then technical issues with two fuel valve systems aboard the Delta IV Heavy rocket, prompted the delay of the mission by 24 hours. But when the mission did get under way, it did so flawlessly, and continued in that manner right through until splashdown 4.5 hours later.

The two fairings which protect the Service Module as it sets between the Orion capsule and the upper stage of its launch booster (and which also take a fair amount of the dynamic pressures the vehicle experiences during launch) are jettisoned
The two fairings which protect the Service Module as it sets between the Orion capsule and the upper stage of its launch booster (and which also take a fair amount of the dynamic pressures the vehicle experiences during launch) are jettisoned

Orion launched precisely on time, lifting-off in the post-dawn light of Florida’s Space Coast, and rising smoothly from Launch Complex 37 at Canaveral Air Station. The textbook launch was followed by a mission that followed the flight plan with amazing accuracy to the point where the craft, after a journey that carried it further than any vehicle intended to carry humans has flown in 42 years, and  which saw it punch its way back through the Earth’s atmosphere at 32,000 kph, splashed down just three kilometres or so from its planned target point.

The mission, called Exploration Flight Test 1, was uncrewed, and intended to test all of the critical systems for the vehicle with the exception of the Service Module, which won’t fly until the next Orion mission in 2017. Through the flight all of the system vital to the safety of a crew were put through their paces: the Launch Abort System, radiation protection, heat shield, and multiple parachute systems and the floatation system, together with all the vehicle’s complex flight avionics and software.

The limb of the Earth as Orion reaches some 4,000 km from its home, on its way to over 5,800 km, before making its return
The limb of the Earth as Orion reaches some 4,000 km from its home, on its way to over 5,800 km, before making its return

So well did the vehicle perform through the flight that it was, in some ways, mundane; milestones came and went without a hitch, with only the launch and re-entry / splashdown forming points of drama / excitement. But really, that’s the whole point; problems aren’t what you need on a space mission. Let Hollywood play with them, but leave them out of the real thing.

Following launch, the vehicle rapidly climbed to orbit, the Delta launch vehicle’s two side boosters dropping away after the first few minutes of the flight to leave the core booster to get the vehicle to its initial height. Separation of the upper stage, complete with the “dummy” Service Module and Orion capsule then occurred, follow by the jettisoning of the fairings covering what would normally be the Service Module, and the ejection of the Launch Abort System (which, in a real mission, would automatically pull the capsule, which it enshrouds during launch, away from the main rocket the millisecond a serious anomaly in the rocket’s flight status is detected).

Re-entry: a camera aboard Orion captures the limb of the Earth, with the flames of super-heated plasma just visible as the bow-shock wave of the craft's entry into the atmosphere generate temperatures of 2,200C (twice that of molten lava) directly in front of the capsule, and around 1,800C around it, all of which is prevented from burning-up the vehicle by the presence of the heat shield 2under" the capsule and the shuttle-like thermal tiles covering its conical sides
Re-entry: a camera aboard Orion captures the limb of the Earth, with the flames of super-heated plasma just visible at the top, as the bow shock compression of air in front of the craft generates enormous friction with the air around it. Temperatures within the plasma reach 2,200C (twice that of molten lava) directly in front of the capsule, and about 1,800C around it, all of which is prevented from burning-up the vehicle by the presence of the heat shield “under” the capsule and the shuttle-like thermal tiles covering its conical sides

Passing through the Van Allen radiation belts – a critical test for the vehicle’s radiation protection and its electronics – Orion rose to a height of over 5,800 km above the Earth prior to separating from the Delta upper stage and “dummy” Service Module to start its return to Earth under its own power. This allowed mission planners to test the vehicle’s propulsion systems, which also functioned perfectly and with a greater degree of accuracy than had been expected.

Indeed, the only “failures” encountered with the flight, were the loss of the parachute bay cover – a section of the spacecraft which protects Orion’s parachute systems, and which is jettisoned for later recovery following re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere – and the first set of drogue ‘chutes deployed. Following splash down, it was discovered that one of the 35-6 metre diameter main parachutes had sunk before it could be recovered, and one of the five floatation devices used to right the craft should it land inverted in the water (it didn’t), had failed to inflate.  All of these are really minimal loses when compared to the overall success of the flight.

A great shot from the recovery ship USS Anchorage, sent via the NASA Google Hangout covering the mission, showing Orion EFT-1 descending under 3 fully deployed main parachutes
A great shot from the recovery ship USS Anchorage, sent via the NASA Google Hangout covering the mission, showing Orion EFT-1 descending under 3 fully deployed main parachutes

There will now be a three-year pause in Orion flights. This will allow the first Service Module to be built and delivered to NASA by the European Space Agency and, more particularly, allow NASA to complete the construction of the first in its new generation of launch vehicles, a rocket simply referred to as the Space Launch System.

Even so, and as I recently blogged, Orion EFT-1 marks the first step in what will hopefully, political will allowing, be a new era in the exploration of our solar system. As such, and despite more than fifty years having passed since the first man orbited the Earth, it is fair to say that where space flight is concerned, the human adventure is just beginning.