It's been a busy seven days in the world of space capsule testing, with both Boeing and NASA taking steps toward the eventual first missions of their CST-100 and Orion spacecraft. NASA's Orion program managed to test phases of the re-entry process with a water impact and parachute test of the capsule designed for taking humans beyond Earth orbit for the first time since the Apollo era.
Orion is expected to make its first test flight in 2014 with an unmanned mission to a point 3,600 miles from Earth. The test flight will take the capsule about 15 times farther out than the International Space Station and is designed to test the heat shield and parachutes at re-entry speeds similar to what the capsule will experience after returning from deep space.
The recent water impact test was of an 18,000-pound version of the Orion capsule being used specifically for testing. The spacecraft is dropped into water at different angles from what's essentially a giant swing set at the Langley Water Impact Basin, which has been used for decades for this kind of testing.
Orion will be dropped from different trajectories and different heights to simulate the many ways it may hit the ocean, including a straight impact as well as a sideways velocity that could be experienced if it were swinging underneath the parachutes during the descent.
In the most recent tests Orion impacted the water both with a side-angle trajectory and a classic belly flop, straight in the pool.
While one Orion test article was busy practicing its dives, another was high over the desert being pushed out of a C-130 Hercules to test the parachutes. It's actually less of a capsule and more of a dart-shaped design engineered to be the same basic weight as the Orion to test the drogue, pilot and main parachutes of the Orion re-entry system.
After the smaller drogue and pilot parachutes deploy at 20,000 feet, three main chutes – each 116 feet in diameter – are deployed to provide the familiar ride back to Earth seen in many spaceflights dating back to the Mercury missions.
In the meantime, Boeing completed a jettison test of its forward heat shield that will protect the parachutes of its CST-100 spacecraft during re-entry. The CST-100 is part of NASA's program to use commercial space transportation for future manned missions to low earth orbit.
The jettison testing of the heat shield is a small early step in the development of a complete spacecraft from Boeing capable of carrying humans to the International Space Station and elsewhere in Earth orbit.
Boeing is one of three companies, along with SpaceX and Sierra Nevada Corporation, developing spacecraft with funding help from NASA capable of carrying humans into orbit.
