Mars exploration one step closer after Nasa’s flawless Orion craft test flight
White smoke rose in the air and green dye coloured the ocean to guide the USS Anchorage and smaller recovery vessels to the spot where Nasa’s Orion crew capsule splashed down to Earth after a flawless and awe-inspiring test flight on Friday.
Cameras mounted inside Orion caught the casual splendour of the world turning beneath it as the empty capsule lapped the planet twice before tearing into the atmosphere on its journey home at 20,000 mph.
As its heatshield rose to twice the temperature of molten lava, Orion popped its parachutes and gently floated down, scoring a bullseye on its target landing site off the coast of Baja California in Mexico at 4.29pm GMT.
“There’s your new spacecraft, America,” mission control commentator Rob Navias said, as Orion neared the water. The capsule will be carried for the next few days in the well deck of the USS Anchorage back to San Diego, 630 miles to the north-east.
The launch at 12.05pm GMT aboard a Delta IV heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, was as free of problems as
Thursday’s aborted attempt was full of them. Immediately, Nasa tweeted “Liftoff! #Orion’s flight test launches a critical step on our #JourneytoMars”. Four hours and 24 minutes later, after flying further and faster than any spacecraft designed for humans since the Apollo moon programme, Orion splashed back to Earth in the Pacific. The US space agency hopes that the successful launch will foreshadow the first human expedition to Mars.
The mission tested how Orion fares in the extreme conditions of space travel.
Nasa has designed the capsule to take up to six astronauts into deep space, and its 16ft-wide heat shield and sophisticated service module are among the features whose durability will be inspected upon return.
The capsule not only survived launch and orbit, but also temperatures of about 2,200C (4,000F) as it returned through Earth’s atmosphere. Nasa also tested an emergency abort function developed to save astronauts in the event of a malfunction during launch.
The agency has planned a second unmanned flight for 2018, and a manned mission to travel around the moon for the 2020s. Eventually, it hopes to send astronauts on an Orion mission through deep space to an asteroid and
Mars in the 2030s.
Nasa had to postpone an initial launch on Thursday after a boat entered the launch area, strong winds forced automatic aborts and two valves failed to close properly.
“The first humans who will set foot on Mars are alive on Earth today,” said Charles Bolden, Nasa’s chief administrator, who watched the dawn launch with his wife.
“Everyone wants to go to Mars,” said Nasa astronaut Rex Waldheim, following the launch. He was on the final flight of the space shuttle programme, in 2011, a mission that he said was tinged with melancholy.
The end of that programme signalled the loss of America’s ability to launch its own astronauts into space. Since 2011, it has been buying seats on Russian Soyuz launches to fly to and from the international space station.
“Now we’ve turned the corner. Orion is flying,” said Waldheim.
Independent experts have been more cautious. “I think to say that this is the road to Mars is a bit much but one shouldn’t detract from the importance of this launch. All of Nasa’s future exploration plans are predicated on this system,” said Ian Crawford, professor of planetary science at Birkbeck, University of London.
On Thursday night, engineers investigated a problem with the rocket’s fuel tank valves, which had led to the postponement. Minutes before lift-off, the valves failed to close correctly. Rather than risk leakage during the flight, mission controllers scrubbed the attempt.
On Friday morning, engineers reported that the liquid hydrogen fuel, which exists at temperatures of about –250°C, probably froze the valves so they became stuck.
So mission operators commanded the rocket to periodically close and open them during fuelling in the runup to launch. This kept them flexible, and the spacecraft took off exactly as its 2 hour 39 minute launch window opened.
The window was dictated by the trajectory needed to bring the spacecraft back to Earth in the Pacific, 275 miles west of Baja, California. This meant looping the spacecraft around the Earth twice. On the second orbit, an upper-stage rocket engine boosted Orion to an altitude of 3,600 miles, about 15 times higher than the orbit of the international space station.
This is as far as existing American rockets can send the spacecraft. To get to the moon and beyond, Nasa is developing the
Space Launch System (SLS), a rocket larger than the Saturn Vs which took astronauts to the moon in the 1960s.
But budgets are tight. The next launch of Orion is not scheduled until 2017-18. This will be the maiden flight of the SLS. Astronauts are not likely to fly on Orion/SLS until 2021, although even this date has been called into question.
“Nasa spokespeople are now heavily policed by their PR machine and it is noticeable that in the last three press conferences they have bucked confirmation that it will take place by then. We shall see,” said Dr David Baker, a former Nasa staffer.
Going further from Earth is “the name of the game”, according to Bobbie Gail Swan, of RadWorks – Advanced Radiation Technologies.
Swan is the project manager for an instrument that flew on Orion. Called Bird (battery operated independent radiation detector), it monitors the radiation experienced while in space. This is a key health concern, especially on a trip to Mars which would require humans to undertake voyages of nine to 12 months in space at a time.
Nasa said all of Orion’s systems operated “to perfection” during the flight, which cost $370m (£237m).
If all continues to go well, the earliest a Mars mission is likely to take place in the mid 2030s, meaning that those future astronauts are today’s pre-schoolers.
To help inspire this generation, Nasa collaborated with Sesame Street to have items such as Ernie’s rubber ducky, Oscar’s pet worm, Slimey, and the Cookie Monster’s cookie inside Orion for the flight.
Nasa timeline
12 April 1981 Launch of first shuttle, Columbia, which was said to herald an era of frequent access to space.
28 January 1986 Challenger disaster. Lost 73 seconds after launch, seven astronauts were killed and the shuttle fleet was grounded for three years.
1 February 2003 Columbia disaster.The original space shuttle was lost during re-entry. It killed seven more astronauts and helped speed up the retirement of the programme.
8 July 2011 After 134 missions, Atlantis was the final space shuttle flight.
5 December 2014 Orion test launch. After a 24-hour postponement, the first new American crew capsule was launched and returned to earth.
2018? The second test flight will be a circumnavigation of the Moon.
2021? First Orion launch with crew. Four astronauts will make a trip to lunar orbit.
2030? Orion trip to Mars. The first voyage to Mars will last for 18-24 months. Astronauts will probably not land on Mars itself but study it from orbit.
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Mars exploration one step closer after Nasa’s flawless Orion craft test flight | Science | The Guardian
