NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

ULA was awarded up to $6.7 million via the Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) contract to develop a high-fidelity EDS testbed and demonstrate that system in the Atlas V LV systems integration laboratory (SIL). Over the past several years, ULA has expended significant efforts to ensure that the EELV fleet is compliant with human spaceflight requirements. EDS is the critical technology and key enabler to safe commercial human spaceflight using the mature, reliable EELV transportation system to Low Earth Orbit. In the unlikely event of a LV failure, the EDS provides the crewed spacecraft sufficient advance warning to safely abort, as well as safing the LV by shutting down the liquid rocket engines to terminate thrust and minimize danger to the crew during the abort maneuver. This development effort is a required step along the way to a fully human-rated EELV system, and it is part of an overall evolution plan that builds on today’s success to provide a safer and more capable crewed launch solution. ULA is working in partnership with NASA and several other CCDev partners to ensure that EDS capability on the flight-proven EELV fleet can support its unique crewed spacecraft designs.

The emergency detection system must be designed to notify and/or protect the occupants from hazards in a timely manner, “safing” the system and/or enabling the occupants to get away from the hazard, guarding against loss of life or limb. In a crewed launch vehicle (LV), the detection of an impending catastrophic failure is extremely time critical, measured in fractions of a second for the worst case to many minutes in others, and the results of a failure can be dangerous to crew safety. This Space Act Agreement develops three main areas: (1) the overall approach to an EDS implementation for the existing flight proven EELV fleet of LVs, (2) the development of a comprehensive fault coverage analysis identifying and determining timing and effects of potential failure modes that are hazardous to the crew, and (3) an conceptual EDS architecture common to both EELV’s.

With three families of launch vehicles – Atlas V, Delta II, and Delta IV– ULA continues the tradition of supporting strategic U.S. space initiatives with advanced robust launch solutions to provide assured access to space and 100 percent mission success.