After pedaling his bike through the barrier island dunes of Melbourne Beach, Florida Institute of Technology professor J. Travis Hunsucker watched NASA’s powerful Artemis I lunar rocket blaze a fiery path through the sky after midnight last month, glinting to a small dot in the sky. Atlantic Ocean.
Now HEassistant professor of ocean engineering and marine sciences reported to the Navy amphibious transport ship USS Portland in San Diego. On Sunday, it will help predict and analyze wave dynamics to guide NASA officials as they retrieve the rocket’s rocking Orion capsule after it crashed into the Pacific Ocean.
“Same thing, wow. I saw this vehicle fall off the horizon on our beach. We see these beautiful photos of the moon orbiting it. And then, four weeks later, you’ll see it arrive on the well deck,” said Hunsucker, referring to the ship’s lower deck, which will be flooded to load the capsule onto the ship.
“On the other coast of the United States, I would find the same engineering paper in the ocean,” he said.
Sea:Artemis I: NASA’s Orion breaks records halfway through deep space travel
Sea:NASA: ‘Teardrop’ power of Artemis rocket damages mobile launcher at KSC
The 322-metre Artemis I rocket launched into the sky on November 1. 16 lifts an uncrewed Orion capsule from pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center on an epic 1.3 million-mile trek that orbits the moon twice.
Completing its 25½-day mission, Artemis’ Orion capsule will decelerate from 25,000 miles per hour (roughly a dozen times faster than a rifle bullet) to 300 mph in a dizzying time upon entry into Earth’s atmosphere. The capsule’s heat shield should reach 5,000 degrees, or twice the temperature of the molten lava.
After a series of parachutes are deployed, NASA engineers estimate that the 11-by-16½-foot capsule will slow to about 20 mph before gliding towards the earth and crashing into the sea surface, 50 to 60 nautical miles from San Diego, within sight of the rescue ship’s crew. beach.
“We’re frantically trying to get to the capsule,” said Melissa Jones, NASA’s Artemis I director of landing and recovery, after the splashdown to recover launched pieces of hardware that could sink into the depths of the ocean. This includes the annular front bulkhead cover, which protects the parachutes and other soft materials during the spacecraft’s re-entry.
“NASA is all about data. We also want to fly crew on the next mission. “It’s an important test flight for us to be able to get this data back,” Jones said.
The Orion landing and recovery crew, consisting of approximately 95 people, included Navy amphibian experts piloting inflatable boats; NASA engineers and technicians from KSC and Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas; Air Force weather experts; and Lockheed Martin Space Operations personnel. A fleet of helicopters from the nearby Naval Air Station North Island will provide aerial detection.
Jones said Portland will approach the rocking Orion and divers will use sensors to “sniff checks” for hydrazine or ammonia leaking from the capsule. Navy personnel would then attach support ropes to Orion and fill the ship’s well deck with approximately 6 feet of seawater, and a cable would pull the floating spacecraft through the ship’s lowered stern door into a specially designed sled.
Portland will then transport the capsule to a dock at the San Diego Naval Base.
Jones said the primary splash area is located within a Navy fleet training area — a move designed to keep recreational boats out. In August 2020, a makeshift fleet of private ships besieged the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavor after landing in the Gulf of Mexico near Pensacola with astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley.
The Orion crew module is designed to transport four astronauts to deep space during future missions in a 330 cubic feet of habitable space. Jones said Sunday’s rescue team will also attempt to recover the capsule’s three main parachutes for scientific analysis.
Jones said the rescue team will have about six hours to collect samples and images and conduct evaluations and tests before pulling the uncrewed capsule onto the well deck. This will include approximately 1½ hours of footage documenting the condition of the heat shield before it touched anything inside Portland.
Three dummies equipped with sensors are in Orion for testing purposes. In contrast, Artemis II will propel four astronauts on a lunar flyby.
Liliana Villarreal, who will lead NASA’s capsule recovery campaign for this mission, said Artemis II astronauts will maneuver through Orion’s hatch in open water before the crew module is towed aboard a Navy ship, and the astronauts must report to the ship’s medical compartment. two hours.
“It’s completely different. There’s a lot of equipment that we need to make sure it’s turned off before we do that,” Villarreal said. “There are interfaces with crew suits that we need to make sure we disconnect so that the crew can exit the vehicle safely.”
Jones: NASA leadership career was ‘in my blood’
Jones was born and raised in Oak Hill, a small Volusia County town of approximately 2,000 people, just north of KSC and Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, just off US 1.
Because of his deep family ties to Cape, NASA suspects his career is “in my blood.” As a kid, he thought space travel was commonplace: “I guess I grew up thinking it was okay to go out in the front yard and look at a launch.”
“My grandfather was a security guard at KSC and my grandmother worked in the gift shop. My father was an administrator on the Titan program. My mother was a NASA quality inspector,” Jones said.
While studying at the University of Central Florida, Jones recalled receiving a phone call in February 2003 from his mother, Sue Hutchinson, awaiting the shuttle Columbia’s return to the Cape at the 15,000-foot-long Shuttle Landing Facility.
“He called and woke me up and said, ‘Get up and turn on the news.’ And he hung up. And he was there the rest of the day,” Jones recalled.
Columbia tragically disintegrated over Texas during atmospheric reentry, killing all seven astronauts on board.
In January 2004, Jones joined NASA’s shuttle program as a contractor on the return-to-flight mission that culminated in Discovery’s successful launch in July 2005.
Jones is NASA’s first director of capsule recovery based at KSC: their Apollo-era counterparts were located at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
“I’m really the first person to do this work – and we haven’t done it in over 50 years. It’s an honor to have been chosen to do this,” Jones said.
“The foundation of space was established for me by my family and I continue that legacy. I hope my children see it and they want to continue it,” he said.
Splashing air, waves are important factors
Hunsucker spent the days before Sunday’s heavy rain working on wave forecasts along the San Diego coast, where Pacific waves could originate from a wide geographic area stretching from the Gulf of Alaska to the southern hemisphere.
He has spent the last four years with the Johnson Space Center meteorology group analyzing Orion recovery wave forecast data, specifically from NASA’s rescue exercises using mock capsules. A critical component of its business: Position Portland to minimize waves on the ship’s well deck.
Hunsucker says, “You have a 700-foot long ship that is affected by the waves. It’s starting to move. You have a well deck inside that ship. It also has waves caused by the movement of the ship.” aforementioned.
“My role is to understand how ocean waves affect the movement of the ship, how the movement of the ship affects the well deck waves, and in turn how the well deck waves affect the crew module,” he said.
NASA’s Orion rescue team completed a three-day “final rehearsal” exercise at sea using a mock capsule last week in Portland. Jones said Johnson Space Center staff will choose Sunday’s splashdown location based on weather conditions and flight rules outlining “sea state” requirements for wave action and “winds above” standards to keep parachutes working properly.
NASA Flight Director Judd Frieling said during a briefing on Monday that if conditions permit, Orion could alternatively leap just southeast of the Catalina Islands near Los Angeles. Or Orion could make a “short” landing about 1,200 nautical miles south of San Diego. He identified these three-hop sites as a list of Plan A / Plan B / Plan C options.
Carla Rekucki, chief testing director of NASA’s Reconnaissance Ground Systems program, said the large red balloons attached to the capsule are the highlight of the crew module strut system amid rolling ocean waves.
Working under contract with Jacobs Technology, Hunsucker said Portland’s course will also depend on the shapes and steepness of incoming waves. He likened the exercise to driving through a parking lot full of potholes.
“I think we’re all hoping to land on a nice, calm, flat and still day,” Hunsucker said. Said.
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NASA’s Orion capsule is expected to drop at 12:40 PM EST on Sunday, December 12. 11. Watch live streaming from 11am on Floridatoday.com
Rick Neale She is the South Brevard Watchdog Correspondent on FLORIDA TODAY (for more of her stories, see Click here.) Contact Neale at 321-242-3638 or rneale@floridatoday.com. Twitter: @RicNeale1
