When you think of NASA and space travel, you probably think of Cape Canaveral or Houston. While those may be the most iconic representations of the Space Agency, one Virginia facility is part of NASA’s past and future.
When the Space Shuttle program came to an end last year, many wondered just how NASA planned to go on. The fact is that NASA has been working on it for years.
Called the Orion Multipurpose Crew Vehicle or MPCV, this next generation spacecraft will enable America to explore beyond low earth orbit for the first time in more than 40 years.
NASA Langley in Hampton is a major contributor to the project.
“Once Orion decided to do water landings, they had to find a facility that could do water landings to simulate the same kind of landing commission. The only way you can simulate is by swinging, swinging and dropping the test article to get the right loads into the astronauts spines or any impact type of scenario you want to get the right loading into the vehicle, in this case it’s the Orion spacecraft.”
That’s Lynn Bowman, project manager for the Orion SPLASH Project
“It stands for Structurally Passive Landing Attenuation for Survivability of Human Crew.”
We will stick with SPLASH. It turns out NASA Langley has something very special. It’s the place where the Apollo astronauts trained, called:
“The gantry, it’s whole purpose in the beginning was all about landing on the moon, and that’s why the gantry was built. And it also turns out it’s a unique facility, it’s a national historic landmark, and the gantry is the only facility in the world that can do these kinds of swings and drops. There’s a lot of facilities out there that do vertical drop testing, and vertical drop testing, we can do that here too, but if you want to get the right loads onto your vehicle your structure, you’ve got to swing it and drop it.”
So last year, NASA Langley built , or better yet, dug the Hydro Impact Basin, a 115 feet long, 90 feet-wide and 20 feet-deep pool next to the gantry where, today, engineers are going to swing and drop a scale model of the MCPV. It is one of many tests required to certify Orion for water landings, as gantry technician Troy Merrifield explains:
“The first was proof of concept that we could actually swing it and hit the target that we needed to hit. Now we’re into actual good data-gathering mode. There’s a hundred- something channels of data on that, everything from accelerometers to string gauges, checking to see how the materials pull apart and compress and pressure transducers that are measuring how hard it’s hitting the water.”
The capsule hits hard, but remains upright. Before Merryfield goes to help recover the vehicle, he is reminded of the gantry’s legacy.
“It really is neat when you tell people why this was built and they go ‘huh?’ ” And then you take them inside the building and you show them the pictures of Neil Armstrong doing the different things and standing in the different places you can walk around. I’m a history buff. It’s like, man, this is really neat. So now I’m working here, don’t get much cooler. The only way it would be cooler is if I were an astronaut.”
NASA Langley must now prepare for another round of testing at the Basin using the next generation of the Orion capsule, what’s called the ground test article. It is currently being built by Lockheed Martin and will arrive in Virginia in 2013.
-by Sondra Woodward
Virginia Public Radio 