Engineers at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia began a new series of four water impact drop tests with a test version of the capsule for NASA’s Orion spacecraft. The test data will help engineers better understand what Orion and its crew may experience when landing in the Pacific Ocean after Artemis missions to the Moon.
The tests, at Langley’s Landing and Impact Research Facility Hydro Impact Basin, will simulate a few landing scenarios as close to real-world conditions as possible. While NASA performed a series of previous tests at the basin, the current tests use a new configuration of the crew module that represents the spacecraft’s final design.
Data from the water impact tests are part of the formal qualification test program to fulfill structural design and requirement verification before Artemis II, NASA’s first Artemis mission with crew. Information will help feed final computer models for loads and structures prior to the Artemis II flight test.