The NASA Aeronautics Team Is Working To Transform Aviation By Enabling A New Commercial Market For Supersonic

Life at the Lab: Dummies Crash Planes!

Get a behind-the-scenes look at how test dummies at NASA's Langley Research Center contribute to making the planes we fly on safer and developing space exploration vehicles. Work ranges from next-generation aircraft to water-impact tests that evaluate the splashdown of Orion astronaut crew capsules returning from space. 

Credit: NASA/Videographer: Gary Banziger; Writer and Co-Producer: Lily Daniels; Editor and Co-Producer: Kevin Anderson

Orion Launch Abort System Motor Gets Fired-up About the Journey to Mars

Applause resounded from NASA and its partners as they watched Orion’s jettison motor generate 40,000 pounds of thrust in just a blink of an eye, preparing the spacecraft for its first integrated mission with the Space Launch System rocket.  

Onlookers had just witnessed a 1.5-second jettison motor test firing at Aerojet Rocketdyne’s facility in Sacramento, California.

The Orion launch abort system (LAS) is designed to protect astronauts in the unlikely event there is an issue during launch by pulling the spacecraft away from the rocket during a mission. The jettison motor is activated during ascent to separate the launch abort system from the spacecraft after it is no longer needed during a mission.

“This test showed us that the jettison motor can quickly generate the amount of thrust needed to pull the LAS away during an Orion mission,” said Tim Larson, jettison motor principle engineer for Lockheed Martin who has been with the project since inception. “I’m very pleased with how the test went.”

The fifth firing

The jettison motor has now undergone five tests, including two test flights. Each test in the series builds upon each other, moving the nation forward on its journey to Mars.

The motor used for the fifth test was rebuilt from a previous test motor.

“We were able to recycle some of the parts from the second ground test and use it for this test,” said NASA LAS project manager Robert Decoursey. “We not only went green, but we also saved money.”

Inside and around the test motor were instruments that included strain gauges, accelerometers and pressure transducers, which feed engineers high-quality data that show whether the motor design is ready for upcoming flight tests and missions. This motor had more instruments and produced more data than any of the previous tests.

“There are many intricate details in the jettison motor design that are not obvious from the outside, and the consistent orchestration of those details are most important to obtain predictable performance,” said NASA LAS deputy project manager Deborah Crane. “Aerojet Rocketdyne has done an excellent job executing this test on schedule.”

The jettison motor bakery

Creating a jettison motor is like baking two big cakes and making enough batter for some leftover cupcakes, according to Tim Warner, NASA LAS business manager.

The jettison motor being tested in the photo above would be activated during ascent to separate the launch abort system from the spacecraft after it is no longer needed during a mission.Credits: Aerojet Rocketdyne

What’s most exciting for the team, besides the successful test, are the latest upgrades to their baking and mixing tools.

“We were using two mixing batches to make just one motor, but have recently upgraded to a larger mixing bowl, saving us time and money,” Decoursey said.

The new mixing bowl can hold up to 450 whopping gallons of cake batter, or in NASA terms, motor propellant.

The team mixes up the batter in this large mixing bowl and evenly splits the batter into two pots for a perfectly sculpted jettison motor.

Any leftover propellant is used to make small test motors. The smaller motors are used to check the propellant’s combustion capabilities before the motors are accepted for test or flight.

What’s next?

NASA and its partners are expected to perform the last flight test of the launch abort system in 2019 before they begin sending crew to deep space aboard Orion. During the final test, an uncrewed Orion capsule will launch from a modified Peacekeeper missile and demonstrate a successful abort under the highest aerodynamic loads it could experience during a mission.

The jettison motor will be used during Orion’s first integrated mission with SLS, known as Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1) in late 2018. The mission will be the second test flight for Orion, and the first for SLS. EM-1 will send Orion on a three-week journey approximately 40,000 miles beyond the moon. The test will demonstrate the integrated performance of the rocket and spacecraft before their second test flight together, Exploration Mission-2, which will carry crew.

The LAS is led out NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia in collaboration with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

Sasha Ellis

NASA Langley Research Center

Feb. 12 'State of NASA' Events Highlight Agency Goals for Space Exploration

NASA centers across the country, including the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, are opening their doors Monday, Feb. 12, to media and social media for 'State of NASA' events.

Activities include a speech from acting NASA Administrator Robert Lightfoot, and unique opportunities for a behind-the-scenes look at the agency's work. These events follow President Trump's Fiscal Year 2019 budget proposal delivery to the U.S. Congress.

Events at NASA centers will include media tours and presentations on the agency's exploration goals for the Moon, Mars and worlds beyond, the innovative technologies developed and under development, as well as the scientific discoveries made as NASA explores and studies Earth and our universe, and advancements toward next-generation air travel.

Lightfoot will provide a 'State of NASA' address to the agency's workforce at 1 p.m. EST from Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. His remarks will air live on NASA Television and the agency's website, https://www.nasa.gov/live. Following the presentation, NASA centers will host tours of their facilities for media and social media guests.

At Langley, the news and social media event will run from 1 to 5 p.m. and include:

A look at the SAGE III flight control center. SAGE III is the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III studying Earth's atmosphere from the International Space Station.

A visit to the research aircraft hangar to see aircraft that are used in support of airborne research campaigns, as well as an inflatable heat shield that will enable landing on distant worlds.

A view of the labs where sonic-boom testing is being done to lower their impact so that commercial aircraft can be developed to fly supersonically over land.

A tour in a lab where inflatable space structures are being developed.

Follow the hashtag #StateOfNASA for more!

Click on the link to the full article to see how NASA’s Langley Research Center is changing the way we conceptualize commercial flight!

NASA Aeronautics Budget Proposes Return of X-Planes

Edwards AFB CA (SPX) Feb 19, 2016 NASA is researching ideas that could lead to developing an electric propulsion-powered aircraft that would be quieter, more efficient and environmentally friendly than today’s commuter aircraft. The proposed piloted experimental airplane is called Sceptor, short for the Scalable Convergent Electric Propulsion Technology and Operations Research. The concept involves removing the wing from a Full article

Nebula Images: http://nebulaimages.com/

Astronomy articles: http://astronomyisawesome.com/

For the first time, Kepler measured the “shock breakout” of a star, the early flash from the shockwave of a dying red supergiant. The flash comes from a type II supernova, KSN 2011d. Read more

Learn more about the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) at: http://tess.gsfc.nasa.gov/ 

Watch live coverage of today’s (Wed. April 18, 2018) launch at: http://www.nasa.gov/nasalive/

A Like for NASA

Hi everyone!

I’m participating in the NASA Aerospace Scholars program at @nasa‘s Langley Research Center ( @nasalangley ). I wanted to share my team’s Facebook page with you, so you can see what we’ve been up to! It would really help my team out if you liked the page on Facebook!

If you’re interested in the opportunity, you can apply here until June 1st! Feel free to ask me any questions you have about the program and I’ll  do my best to answer.

Apollo 10 Audio — Publicly Available Since 1970s

Recent news articles have reported that “newly declassified” audiotapes reveal that Apollo 10 astronauts heard “outer-spacey” music as the spacecraft flew around the far side of the moon in 1969. 

Here are the facts:

While listed as ‘confidential’ in 1969 at the height of the Space Race, Apollo 10 mission transcripts and audio have been publicly available since 1973.  Since the Internet did not exist in the Apollo era, we have only recently provided digital files for some of those earlier missions. The Apollo 10 audio clips were uploaded in 2012, but the mission’s audio recordings have been available at the National Archives since the early 1970s.

As for the likely source of the sounds, Apollo 10 Lunar Module Pilot Gene Cernan told us on Monday, ‘I don’t remember that incident exciting me enough to take it seriously. It was probably just radio interference. Had we thought it was something other than that we would have briefed everyone after the flight. We never gave it another thought.’

If you’d like to listen to the audio file, it is available HERE (starting at 2:50). 

The full transcript is available HERE.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Power of Pink Provides NASA with Pressure Pictures

They say you show your true colors when you’re under pressure.

Turns out the old saying works for models being tested in wind tunnels as well, specifically those coated with a unique Pressure-Sensitive Paint (PSP) that NASA engineers have used for more than 25 years.

Read more: https://www.nasa.gov/aero/power-of-pink-provides-nasa-with-pressure-pictures