Accelerometers and strain gauges have been attached to Orion in various locations.
#Scientists finetune odds asteroid bennu portable#
Inside the Operations and Checkout Building high bay, the crew module is positioned on a special portable test chamber for multi-point random vibration testing. While engineers continue to test Orion's parachutes for future missions, engineers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida continue to make progress on the Orion spacecraft being prepared for its December trip to space. The new risers are lighter and more flexible - two qualities that will come in particularly handy when Orion is ready to carry humans into space. In addition to the new test conditions, this was also the first time that the steel risers connecting the parachute lines to Orion were replaced with the textile risers that will be incorporated into future Orion spacecraft after Orion's first flight this year. "With this test successfully completed, our next step is to dig into that information and use it to fine tune the launch abort trajectories for flight."
"We wanted to record how long it took to inflate the parachutes in a launch pad abort scenario and collect data on how the different conditions affected the quality of the parachute deployment," Johnson said. But the real value of the test will come with the data the engineers were able to gather from it. All the elements worked together and the parachutes reached a fully open state setting up a soft landing as expected. Army's Yuma Proving Ground, with the main parachutes deploying soon after leaving the plane, before the capsule had a chance to straighten out. To simulate those conditions, a test version of Orion was dropped from a C-17 at 13,000 feet above the U.S. And on top of all of these factors, the crew module will be flying sideways when the parachutes deploy, instead of falling straight down as it does during reentry. The parachute system won't have as long to do the job since the spacecraft will be at much lower altitude than for a nominal reentry mission, and with the vehicle going slower, they won't deploy as quickly. In a pad abort or a low altitude launch abort, Orion's three main parachutes would be called on to lower the crew module to the ground without the help of the two drogues that normally precede them. But we need to know they can perform in an emergency, too." "We want to see them deploy after a successful mission every time. "We hope we never have to use the parachutes this way," said Chris Johnson, project manager for the parachutes.
Once it has pulled the crew away from the emergency, it's up to the parachutes to bring them down for a safe landing. In an emergency on the launch pad or during the early stages of ascent, it can activate in milliseconds to pull the crew to safety. "I think that, overall, the situation has improved."Read more of this story at Slashdot.Orion is the safest spacecraft ever built to carry humans, and its Launch Abort System can take a good deal of the credit for that distinction. "The impact probability went up just a little bit but it's not a significant change, the impact probability is pretty much the same," lead author Davide Farnocchia, who works at NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies in California, said during a news conference held Wednesday (Aug. And besides, the lessons the research offers for asteroid trajectory calculation could reduce concerns about potential impacts by other asteroids more than enough to compensate. Technically, that's a small increase in risk, but the scientists behind the new research say they aren't worried about a potential impact. While a slightly higher risk than past estimates, it represents a minuscule change in an already minuscule risk, NASA said. From the report: Estimates produced before OSIRIS-REx arrived at the space rock tallied the cumulative probability of a Bennu impact between the years 21 at 1 in 2,700, according to NASA. "As a result, scientists behind new research now say they're confident that the asteroid's total impact probability through 2300 is just 1 in 1,750," reports.
NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has been orbiting an asteroid called Bennu for more than two years to fine-tune the agency's existing models of its trajectory.
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