Thursday - December 04, 2014

Up And Away?

NASA to launch Orion capsule in short minutes.

It’s a test launch.

At T Minus 4 minutes, there was a little hold on the liguid oxygen valve on one of the boosters. Holding, with 1:15 minutes left in today’s launch window. Ready for recycle now ...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – With the imminent debut of its Orion spacecraft, NASA is on a high not felt since the space shuttle days.

Shuttle veterans, in fact, are leading the charge in Thursday morning’s two-orbit, 4½-hour test flight, meant to shake out the capsule before astronauts climb aboard — eventually, perhaps, to visit Mars.

“We haven’t had this feeling in a while, since the end of the shuttle program,” said Mike Sarafin, the lead flight director stationed at Mission Control in Houston. “Launching an American spacecraft from American soil and beginning something new, in this case exploring deep space.”

Orion is set to fly farther than any human-rated spacecraft since the Apollo moon program, aiming for a distance of 3,600 miles, more than 14 times higher than the International Space Station.

That peak altitude will provide the necessary momentum for a 20,000-mph, 4,000-degree entry over the Pacific. Those 11 short minutes to splashdown is what NASA calls the “trial by fire,” arguably the most critical part of the entire test flight. The heat shield at Orion’s base, at 16.5 feet across, is the largest of its kind ever built.

Navy ships were stationed near the recovery zone off the Mexican Baja coast.

... Lovin’ it. The toubleshooting plan for the sticky valve is to pressurize the tanks and then cycle the valves half a dozen times. In other words, pump it up and give things a good shake. Rocket Science talk for “give it a kick and see if that fixes it”. ... 45 minutes remaining in today’s launch window ...

NASA is currently streaming video from their Ikhana drone over the splashdown point in the Pacific, code named POINT McGOO. Woo hoo!!

(wazzat? “Mugu”. Oh. Crivens.) Nevermind. It’s “Point Mugu”, off the coast of California.

Ikhana, NASA’s remotely piloted, unmanned aircraft system, will be used Dec. 4 to capture video of the Orion crew module Exploration Flight Test 1 as the module descends through the atmosphere into the Pacific Ocean.
The aircraft’s camera, mounted on the plane’s underside, will generate a live video feed of the descent. Ikhana was acquired by NASA in November 2006 to support Earth science missions and advanced aeronautical technology development.
While Ikhana loiters at 27,000 feet altitude, the infrared camera will detect the capsule. Once the camera has located and acquired the Orion module, the camera operator will switch to an optical camera that will observe Orion’s descent through parachute deployment and splashdown.

Ikhana is an MQ-9 Predator B drone, one of the big ones. Guess NASA had no real need for machine guns or MRAPS in the big government Big Government Big Stuff Giveaway so they took one of these babies instead.



... clock reset, 11 minutes to go ...

CRAP Today’s launch has been scrubbed. Better safe than sorry, the engineers are going to go and manually check the valves. So I guess that means the tanks have to be drained and so forth. Tune in tomorrow, and we’ll try it again.

Posted by Drew458     on 12/04/2014 at 08:23 AM   
Filed Under: • Space •  
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