For those old enough to remember, and space enthusiasts in general, it'll be shades of Apollo all over again -- but some 40 years later.
In many ways, it's "Back to the Future" with NASA's new Orion spacecraft. Designed for human spaceflight, it will be unoccupied for its launch Thursday morning, Dec. 4, but this 4-1/2 hour, two orbit shakedown of the craft represents the United States' first serious attempt to claw its way out of low-earth orbit (LEO) in over four decades.
The mission, called Exploration Flight Test-1, will be on NASA TV, and streamed live at nasa.gov/ntv beginning at 4:30 a.m. The two hour and 39 minute launch window opens at 7:05 a.m. when, if all goes well, a Delta IV Heavy -- the world’s most powerful rocket -- will propel Orion into orbit. By all accounts, take-off of this triple-barreled behemoth is a sight to behold, and reason enough to watch.
To some, much of the rest of the mission -- beginning with the shape of the crew module, and ending with the ocean splashdown and recovery by navy ships -- will have a surprisingly familiar look. For those old enough to remember, and space enthusiasts in general, it'll be shades of Apollo all over again -- but some 40 years later.
The similarities are no accident: The same physics that drove the Apollo concept, have led Lockheed Martin, who built Orion, to employ similar strategies. Orion's purpose, however, is to carry humans farther than Apollo ever could, perhaps even to Mars… eventually anyway. Orion is bigger and badder … Apollo on steroids, one might say.
During this flight, it will get a boost on its second orbit, pushing it out to 3600 miles -- three times LEO -- before falling back to Earth. That's 15 times the altitude of the International Space Station, and ten times higher than the Hubble Space Telescope, where the Shuttle made its highest flights. This is still less than 1/60th the distance to the moon, Orion's nearest potential target. (Notably, current plans for Orion do not include a return to the moon.)
A primary goal of this flight is to test the 1000 pound heat shield during its 20,000 mph (4 miles per second) reentry from that peak height. Temperatures in excess of 4000 degrees Fahrenheit will subject it to about 80% of the stresses that would be expected upon a return from deep space.
The only way to know if this -- the largest, most advanced heat shield ever built -- works, is to try it for real. It is more than 16 feet wide, a mere 1.6 inches at its thickest, and covers the bottom of the capsule. At least 20 percent of the material will burn away as it plunges back through the atmosphere. It has to be flown and tested in space because ground facilities cannot reproduce the plasma pressures and temperatures it must endure to protect Orion during reentry.
A Delta IV heavy rocket is lifted into the Mobil Service Tower on Oct. 1 at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. The rocket will carry NASA's Orion spacecraft during a test flight scheduled for Dec. 4. NASA
Engineers will also check how Orion's flight instruments, or avionics, fare with exposure to the harsh radiation of the inner Van Allen belt surrounding Earth. That is not an issue in LEO flights. All in all, more than half of the systems required for Orion's human certification will be demonstrated in space for the first time.
Just don't hold your breath for that first human trial. Orion's next space test is in 2018, and the first humans will fly it no earlier than 2021.
Even if we're years away from regaining the capabilities we gave up in 1972 with the cancellation of Apollo, our 30 years of experience with the now retired Space Shuttle fleet, and the building and operation of the International Space Station, will allow us to do it better.
Besides, it is doubtful that today's culture would accept the razor-thin margins for error in the Apollo hardware that were tolerated to win the space race. Those craft, as amazing as they were, would be considered death traps today.
Orion is lighter than the Apollo Command Module, yet structurally superior. It's life support systems could supply air and sustenance to a maximum suited crew of six for 6 days -- long enough to return from the moon in a fully depressurized capsule. (Now wouldn't that be fun!) Depressurization at the moon would likely have killed the Apollo astronauts. The new craft is also less susceptible to cabin pressure loss to begin with.
And Orion offers flexibility: smaller crews could go for longer trips, while shorter trips would allow for larger crews. Longer missions, such as the Asteroid Retrieval Mission or a trip to Mars would require something like the proposed Deep Space Habitat to provide crew life support.
Since Orion is designed for deep space, it will not be used to ferry people to the ISS. That job is being handed over to two private companies, SpaceX and Boeing, under NASA contract, Each hopes to be launching crews to the ISS by the end of 2017, but until then, only the cramped but dependable Russian workhorse, the Soyuz, can provide the service.
The SpaceX and Boeing capsules are slightly smaller than Orion, although each can carry up to seven passengers (Apollo seated three), but otherwise they echo the basic Apollo design. Most similarities end there however: The Dragon V2 capsule is designed by SpaceX to set down on solid ground by firing its onboard retrorockets for a soft landing, while Boeing's CST-100 is intended to parachute to a touchdown cushioned by airbags.
Orion will utilize a series of eight parachutes to slow its 300 mph free-fall at 22,000 feet, down to 17 mph as the capsule hits the surface of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California, roughly 600 miles southwest of San Diego. In a scene reminiscent of Apollo days, helicopters will fly out to meet the parachuting Orion well before splashdown. Once in the water, Orion may need to inflate airbags (ala Apollo) to help keep it upright while it bobs in the sea.
All the new craft -- Orion included -- are to be partially reusable. Certain parts, like the expendable heat shields will of course need replacing. To an astronaut from the Apollo era, the programmable, upgradeable touchscreen controls in the cockpit might be confusing, but he would appreciate the improved safety of the frame and materials, and the robust Launch Abort System (not active for tomorrow's test) in case of rocket trouble. Here's a video link to its 2010 test: http://vimeo.com/11631855
And there's one more thing distinguishing now from 40 years ago: On Nov. 23, three new crew members rode to the ISS aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule. Some headlines for this story may inadvertently reflect the maturing of human spaceflight. One said "Three More Humans Travel To Space" and another reported "More People Leave Earth for Space." What stands out to me is the deemphasis of the individuals involved. (In the Soyuz capsule were American Terry Virts, Russian Anton Shkaplerov, and Italian Samantha Cristoforetti.) The times have changed.
The Shuttle, with its wings and runway landings, was an icon for a generation or more, and the basis for many Hollywood depictions of present and future spaceflight. It will be interesting to see what filmmakers do with Orion, which looks more like a throwback to the 1970s. Can a capsule be made to look sexy?
We are resetting our space priorities and moving forward, but what that will ultimately look like is anybody's guess. Will someone like SpaceX or China supersede Orion's goals? For Mars romantics, NASA's timeline means an almost unbearable wait of well into the 2030s for the first Mars mission.
Find rise and set times for the sun and moon, and follow ever-changing celestial highlights in the Skywatch section of the Weather Almanac in the Daily Republican and Sunday Republican.
Patrick Rowan has written Skywatch for The Republican since 1987 and has been a Weather Almanac contributor since the mid 1990s. A native of Long Island, Rowan graduated from Northampton High School, studied astronomy at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in the ’70s and was a research assistant for the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory. From 1981 to 1994, Rowan worked at the Springfield Science Museum’s Seymour Planetarium, most of that time as planetarium manager. Rowan lives in the Florence section of Northampton with his wife, Clara, and cat, Luna.
