World Largest Heat Shield Attached to NASA's Orion Crew Capsule for Crucial ...

Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter

In a key milestone, technicians at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida have attached the world's largest heat shield to a pathfinding version of NASA's Orion crew capsule edging ever closer to its inaugural unmanned test flight later this Fall on a crucial mission dubbed Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1).

One of the primary goals of NASA's eagerly anticipated Orion EFT-1 uncrewed test flight is to test the efficacy of the heat shield in protecting the vehicle - and future human astronauts - from excruciating temperatures reaching 4000 degrees Fahrenheit during scorching re-entry heating.

A trio of parachutes will then unfurl to slow it down for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

Orion is NASA's next generation human rated vehicle now under development to replace the now retired space shuttle. The state-of-the-art spacecraft will carry America's astronauts on voyages venturing farther into deep space than ever before - past the Moon to Asteroids, Mars and Beyond!

'The Orion heat shield is the largest of its kind ever built. Its wider than the Apollo and Mars Science Lab heat shields,' Todd Sullivan told Universe Today. Sullivan is the heat shield senior manager at Lockheed Martin, Orion's prime contractor.

The heat shield measures 16.5 feet in diameter.

Lockheed Martin and NASA technicians mated the heat shield to the bottom of the capsule during assembly work inside the Operations and Checkout High Bay facility at KSC.

It is constructed from a single seamless piece of Avcoat ablator, that was applied by engineers at Textron Defense System near Boston, Mass.

'They applied the Avcoat ablater material to the outside. That's what protects the spacecraft from the heat of reentry.'

The ablative material will wear away as it heats up during the capsules atmospheric re-entry thereby preventing the 4000 degree F heat from being transferred to the rest of the capsule and saving it and the human crew from utter destruction.

Orion EFT-1 is slated to launch in December 2014 atop the mammoth, triple barreled United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV Heavy rocket, currently the most powerful booster in America's fleet.

The Delta IV Heavy is the only rocket with sufficient thrust to launch the Orion EFT-1 capsule and its attached upper stage to its intended orbit of 3600 miles altitude above Earth - about 15 times higher than the International Space Station (ISS) and farther than any human spacecraft has journeyed in 40 years.

At the conclusion of the two-orbit, four- hour EFT-1 flight, the detached Orion capsule plunges back and re-enters the Earth's atmosphere at 20,000 MPH (32,000 kilometers per hour).

'That's about 80% of the reentry speed experienced by the Apollo capsule after returning from the Apollo moon landing missions,' Scott Wilson, NASA's Orion Manager of Production Operations at KSC, told me during an interview at KSC.

'The big reason to get to those high speeds during EFT-1 is to be able to test out the thermal protection system, and the heat shield is the biggest part of that.'

'Numerous sensors and instrumentation have been specially installed on the EFT-1 heat shield and the back shell tiles to collect measurements of things like temperatures, pressures and stresses during the extreme conditions of atmospheric reentry,' Wilson explained.

The data gathered during the unmanned EFT-1 flight will aid in confirming. or refuting, design decisions and computer models as the program moves forward to the first flight atop NASA's mammoth SLS booster in late 2017 on the EM-1 mission and more human crewed missions thereafter.

Stay tuned here for Ken's continuing Orion, Boeing, SpaceX, Orbital Sciences, commercial space, Curiosity, Mars rover, MAVEN, MOM and more planetary and human spaceflight news.

Dr. Ken Kremer is a speaker, scientist, freelance science journalist (Princeton, NJ) and photographer whose articles, space exploration images and Mars mosaics have appeared in magazines, books, websites and calanders including Astronomy Picture of the Day, NBC, BBC, SPACE.com, Spaceflight Now and the covers of Aviation Week & Space Technology, Spaceflight and the Explorers Club magazines. Ken has presented at numerous educational institutions, civic & religious organizations, museums and astronomy clubs. Ken has reported first hand from the Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral and NASA Wallops on over 40 launches including 8 shuttle launches. He lectures on both Human and Robotic spaceflight - www.kenkremer.com

Tagged as: cape canaveral, Deep space exploration, Delta 4 Heavy, heat shield, kennedy space center, Lockheed Martin, NASA, Orion Crew Vehicle, Orion EFT-1

Entities 0 Name: Orion Count: 9 1 Name: NASA Count: 8 2 Name: KSC Count: 3 3 Name: Lockheed Martin Count: 3 4 Name: America Count: 2 5 Name: Earth Count: 2 6 Name: Wilson Count: 1 7 Name: Moon Count: 1 8 Name: SpaceX Count: 1 9 Name: Scott Wilson Count: 1 10 Name: Ken Count: 1 11 Name: Explorers Club Count: 1 12 Name: Orbital Sciences Count: 1 13 Name: Delta Count: 1 14 Name: Delta IV Heavy Count: 1 15 Name: Pacific Ocean Count: 1 16 Name: Textron Defense System Count: 1 17 Name: Boeing Count: 1 18 Name: Princeton Count: 1 19 Name: Dr. Ken Kremer Count: 1 20 Name: BBC Count: 1 21 Name: United Launch Alliance Count: 1 22 Name: Florida Count: 1 23 Name: NBC Count: 1 24 Name: Universe Today Count: 1 25 Name: Orion Manager of Production Operations Count: 1 26 Name: Mass. Count: 1 27 Name: Mars Science Lab Count: 1 28 Name: SPACE.com Count: 1 29 Name: Sullivan Count: 1 30 Name: Boston Count: 1 31 Name: Cape Canaveral Count: 1 32 Name: Todd Sullivan Count: 1 33 Name: Orion Crew Vehicle Count: 1 34 Name: Aviation Week & Space Technology Count: 1 Related 0 Url: http://ift.tt/1hJHRgC Title: Meet NASA's commercial space capsule contenders Description: Sure, the Dragon V2 is the latest (and greatest) spacecraft from SpaceX, but it's not the only capsule that may one day schlep astronauts to the International Space Station. In fact, Elon Musk's firm is just one of three private outfits currently competing in a NASA program for commercial launches with their own vehicles.