With the latest engineering and analysis work complete on the heat shield of the Orion crew module, engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, packed up the shield and on June 1 sent it by truck to NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, for further testing.
Since March 9, when Orion arrived at Marshall, engineers had concentrated their analysis on the heat shield’s ablative surface coating, which protected Orion during the spacecraft’s successful 2014 flight test. Orion is now in development by NASA to carry future astronauts on missions of discovery to an asteroid and on to Mars.
Over a period of about 11 weeks, engineers removed the heat shield’s charred outer surface to permit researchers to study the material and compare it to computer models predicting how the heat shield will perform during future space missions. They used Marshall’s innovative seven-axis milling machine — featuring precision, computer-aided tools that fluidly maneuver to cut large materials or structures — to carve away much of the charred outer surface. They removed the rest of the ablated material by hand.
Marshall engineers led the physical machining effort. The sample removal work was led by personnel from NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. Workers from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, which manages the Orion Program for the agency, and Lockheed Martin of Huntsville, which built Orion and the heat shield for NASA, also were on hand to provide inputs during the process.
Read the full story about the heat shield analysis effort here:
The heat shield next will undergo water-impact testing at Langley Research Center.
Orion will launch atop the Space Launch System, the nation’s next flagship in space. For more information about Orion and NASA’s journey to Mars, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/journeytomars
Kathryn Hambleton
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100kathryn.hambleton@nasa.gov
Rachel Kraft
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-244-2611rachel.h.kraft@nasa.gov
Kim Newton
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
256-544-0034kimberly.d.newton@nasa.gov
Sasha Congiu
NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia
757-864-5473sasha.r.congiu@nasa.gov