WASHINGTON
— NASA and its contracting team conducted the first full-scale ground test of
the U.S. space agency's Moon-bound Constellation program, test firing an abort
motor designed to whisk the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle away from its Ares I
launcher in an emergency.
The test
took place Nov. 20 at the Alliant Techsystems (ATK) Launch Systems facility in
Promontory, Utah. The 5.1-meter abort motor fired for five-and-a-half seconds,
consuming most of its propellant in the first three seconds and producing more
than a half-million pounds of thrust nearly instantaneously at ignition.
"It
performed extremely well. The initial data looks very good," former
astronaut Charlie Precourt, ATK's vice president of launch systems, told
reporters during a teleconference following the static fire test.
ATK built
the motor under subcontract to Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., which is responsible for the Orion
launch-abort system. Lockheed Martin Space Systems of Denver is Orion's prime
contractor.
Barry
Meredith, NASA's launch abort system manager, praised ATK for "pulling
together a very complex system and testing it exactly on the day they said they
would."
Meredith
said the test marked "a major step forward in the development of the Orion
Crew Exploration Vehicle and specifically the launch-abort system that is
going to provide a safe and reliable method of moving the entire astronaut crew
in the event of the emergency from the pad all the way up to [91.44 kilometers]
of altitude."
NASA plans
to conduct its first Constellation
program flight test next spring at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. That test will feature a fully integrated launch-abort system with a
full-sized mock-up of the Orion crew capsule.
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