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Orion Crew Module at Kennedy Space Center
Astronaut Don Pettit watches as a technician works on the Orion crew module inside the Operations and Checkout Building high bay at Kennedy Space Center on March 21, 2013.
The last of eight reaction control system (RCS) pods for the first flight test of Orion has arrived at Kennedy Space Center’s Operations and Checkout Building from the manufacturer, Aerojet, in Redmond, Wash. The pods will provide the critical maneuvers necessary for Orion’s re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere during Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1), scheduled to launch in 2014.
Orion is the exploration spacecraft designed to carry humans farther into space than ever before. The spacecraft will provide emergency abort capability, sustain crews during space travel and provide safe re-entry from deep-space return velocities.
› Read more about Orion
Image Credit: NASA/Dimitri Gerondidakis -
As the Mission Planning and Analysis lead for the Vehicle Integration Office, Nujoud is responsible for the sequence of mission events and ensuring Orion’s power and thermal systems performance will meet mission needs. The coolest part of her job is building a new spacecraft that will take humans further than ever before – doing something that has not been done in the last 40 years.
Nujoud is most proud of developing the crew optical alignment sight – a device that the crew put in the spacecraft window to align the vehicle to the stars or have reference for approaching spacecraft.
As a child, Nujoud had an interest in airplanes. Her father was also an engineer, making a career in aerospace engineering a logical progression.(via asonlynasacan)
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Orion in the Inaugural Parade
The Orion space capsule along with NASA Astronauts Lee Morin, Alvin Drew, Kjell Lindgren, Serena Aunon, Kate Rubins, and Mike Massimino pass the Presidential viewing stand and President Barack Obama during the Inaugural Parade on Monday Jan. 21, 2013, in Washington, D.C.
Orion will carry future astronauts beyond Earth orbit to farther destinations than ever before.
Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls -
Sideways Orion Over Snowy Ireland
Credit & Copyright: Brendan Alexander (Donegal Skies)
Nice!
ARB Orion
(via understandingtheuniverse)
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Orion
Betelgeuse, Bellatrix
Alnitak, Alnilam, Mintaka
Saiph, Rigel
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Orion Parachutes
Three 300-pound main parachutes gently lower a mockup Orion capsule to the ground during a test at the U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona on Dec. 20. The test verified that the parachute design for the spacecraft – which will take humans farther than they’ve ever been before and return them to Earth at greater speeds than ever before – will work in the event of one of the capsule’s two drogue parachutes malfunctions.
Image Credit: NASA -
Winter constellations, from Orion to Canis Major (with the bright Sirius) shine in early morning sky above the ancient statues of Nemrut Dağı or Mount Nemrut.
The World Heritage site is located at top of the 2130-meters high mountain in southeastern Turkey, 40km north of Kahta, near Adıyaman. In 62 BC, King Antiochus I Theos of Commagene built on the mountain top a tomb-sanctuary flanked by huge statues (8-9 meters high) of himself, two lions, two eagles and various Greek, Armenian and Persian gods, such as Hercules-Vahagn, Zeus-Aramazd or Oromasdes (associated with the Persian god Ahura Mazda), Tyche, and Apollo-Mithras. The statues have Greek and Persian features.
As noted by the photographer “This is the highest place in the region and you can easily distinguish the odd-shaped peak from great distances, as there is an additional 50 meters of pyramidal tumulus topping. On the morning of September 26, I woke up before the start of morning twilight and climbed the steep path to the monument.
I hurried to beat the approaching dawn and also all the tourists coming to watch the sunrise. It was already getting bright. This picture shows the eastern terrace statues and their separated heads lit by the Moon”. — Tunc Tezel.
(via scinerds)
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J-2X Finishes a Year of Successful Testing
The J-2X powerpack assembly was fired up one last time on Dec. 13 at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, finishing a year of testing on an important component of America’s next heavy-lift rocket. The powerpack assembly burned millions of pounds of propellants during a series of 13 tests during 2012 totaling more than an hour and a half. NASA engineers will remove the assembly from the test stand to focus on tests of the fully integrated engine. Installation on a test stand at Stennis will begin in 2013. The powerpack is a system of components on top of the engine that feeds propellants to the bell nozzle of the engine to produce thrust. The J-2X engine, designed and built by NASA and industry partner Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne of Canoga Park, Calif., will power the upper stage of the 143-ton (130-metric-ton) Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. The SLS will launch NASA’s Orion spacecraft and other payloads from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, providing an entirely new capability for human exploration beyond low Earth orbit. The program is managed at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. -
On December 13, 1920, Albert Abraham Michelson and Francis Pease measured diameter of the star Betelgeuse, the first measurement of the size of any star other than the Sun. Although the relative size of Betelgeuse has been in dispute since then mostly due to its massive size and incredible speed through space, the methods devised by Michaelson and Pease have been used for decades. The name Betelgeuse is derived from the Arabic يد الجوزاء (Yad al-Jauzā’), meaning the Hand of al-Jauzā, al-Jauzā being the constellation known in the west as Orion the Hunter. Betelgeuse is the right shoulder (or armpit) of Orion and the alpha star of the constellation. The letter B in Betelgeuse, however, was a mistransliteration from Arabic into medieval Latin of the first character Y, which was misread as a B. Betelgeuse arrived in English in 1515 as a direct phonetic transliteration of the Arabic as Ibt al Jauzah, which due to this mispelling was also mistranslated as the Armpit of the Central One. Intermediary forms include Bed Elgueze, Beit Algueze, Betelgeux and Betelgeuze, finally settling on Betelgeuse around the time Michaelson and Pease were measuring the star.
Everything about this star has been misunderstood for centuries, starting with its name in English and continuing to the present day. When Michaelson and Pease attempted to measure its size, interferometry was still a new science and early estimates both missed its size and proximity. Long considered the largest star in the catalog (currently Betelgeuse ranks third largest), Betelgeuse is a massive red super giant millions of times larger than the sun. As recently as the last ten or fifteen years the size and distance of Betelgeuse have been refined and updated as new and improved methods have been implemented.
Michaelson, the scientist who first measured Betelgeuse, had a life scripted by Hollywood: his parents fled Poland when he was only two years old and settled in the American West. Michaelson recieved an appointment from no less than President Ulysses S. Grant to attend the fledgling United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland where he began his scientific endeavors in earnest. He is actually more famous for his experiments to measure the speed of light accurately, known as the Michaelson-Morley experiment, which he began while in Annapolis and which he continued to refine for decades as he tried to measure the impact of aether on the speed of light. He never was able to find evidence of aether, which later became significant and celebrated when Einstein published his Special Theory of Relativity. He was awarded most major scientific prizes including the Nobel Prize of 1907 and is considered the first American to win that prize. His life was so dramatic and crammed with acheivement that his early life and appointment to USNA managed to penetrate into popular culture when his life was celebrated on an episode of Gunsmoke, in which an unpleasant local teacher attempts to block his advancement. The episode Look to the Stars was broadcast in March 1962, 31 years after his death on May 9, 1931.
Although Michaelson and Pease’s first measurement has been in flux since publication, this was not due to flaws in their science or methodology. As recently as 1991 the Yale University Observatory measured the distance to Betelgeuse at 330 light years. The Hipparcos Input Catalog measured the distance two years later at 650 light years, almost doubling Yale’s measurement. In 2008 a team working with Very Large Array Radio Telescopes lead by Graham Harper measured the distance at 643 light years with a margin of error of plus or minus 146 (!!!) light years.
Reblogged for Orion’s armpit.
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NASA: A look at NASA`s Orion Capsule for 2014 test launch.
New NASA Spaceship Comes Together for 2014 Test Launch
Image 1: A mockup of the Orion capsule at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston shows the space agency’s next-generation spacecraft, designed to carry humans beyond low-Earth orbit to the moon, asteroids, and Mars.
CREDIT: Orion Capsule MockupImage 2: This view inside a mockup of NASA’s new Orion space capsule shows a seat for an astronaut (eventually there will be four seats inside). Astronauts will lay on their backs with legs pointing up in the air on the leg rests, shown here.
CREDIT: Clara Moskowitz/SPACE.comThe Orion space capsule is designed to carry humans farther into the solar system than they’ve ever been by taking trips to the moon, asteroids and Mars.
It will be the first new spaceship built by NASA since the space shuttle was developed in the 1970s. The space agency is planning to outsource travel to low-Earth orbit, including the International Space Station, to the private space sector, allowing NASA itself to focus on traveling beyond.
“I think having a test flight in ‘14 is huge — people can see it right there,” Orion program manager Mark Geyer told SPACE.com in September. “It’s a really important goal.”
Orion was originally conceived as a next-generation spacecraft, called the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, under NASA’s now-defunct Constellation program. When that program was cancelled by the Obama administration, the Orion design was carried forward as the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle.
The engineering team behind the capsule has weathered political ups and downs, but say they are glad to be approaching flight time for the craft.
“It’s hard to put in 80 hours a week and then have somebody go, ‘I don’t want to do that anymore,’” Geyer said. “We kind of went through that two years ago, but fortunately we came out on the other side.”
Orion first test flight will be called the Exploration Flight Test 1 (EFT 1), and will include a test of more than half the systems that will appear in the ultimate finished Orion. These include its heat shield, which is a totally novel design made of a special composite material and an ablative coating deigned to burn off as the capsule re-enters Earth’s searing atmosphere for the trip home.
EFT 1 will also test the capsule’s primary structure design and put its avionics and computer systems through their paces.
However, for this first flight test Orion will ride to space aboard a Delta 4 heavy rocket — a proven flight vehicle from ULA (United launch Alliance) that won’t be its ultimate booster. Eventually, Orion is planned to launch toward the moon and beyond on NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), a new heavy-lift rocket still under development. The first flight test for Orion and SLS together, called Exploration Mission 1, is slated for 2017.
Orion and SLS are set to carry humans onboard for the first time in 2021.
On the surface, Orion looks like a modernized Apollo capsule. Both vehicles are cone-shaped and launch vertically atop heavy-lift rockets. However, the similarities are only skin deep.
Where Apollo could carry three astronauts to the moon, Orion is bigger and can take four. The 1960s-era Apollo capsule featured computer technology inferior to that of a smart phone, while Orion is controlled by state-of-the-art technology. Its heat shield is composed of entirely new materials, and many other features are wholly novel.
“It’s kind of like an automobile in 1905 had four tires and a steering wheel, and they still do now,” Geyer said. “But none of the stuff inside is the same.”
Between now and EFT 1, the NASA teams are working with the capsule’s prime contractor, Lockheed Martin, to finish construction of Orion’s systems and assemble them together. The primary body for that test vehicle is finished, while the heat shield still needs about six months more. Its avionics computers are undergoing testing now. Eventually, the whole vehicle will be put together in Florida at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.
“I think we have a great design and we have a great plan to fly it,” Geyer said. “It’s time to do it, to actually put it to use and put it in the missions that are going to let us discover new things.”
Space Launch System: NASA’s Giant Rocket Explained (Infographic)
NASA unveiled its new rocket for deep space exploration - the Space Launch System - on Sept. 14, 2011. The rocket will launch astronauts into space on NASA’s Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, and serve as the go-to booster for U.S. missions to explore asteroids and, eventually, Mars.This infographic above shows how the Space Launch System will work. The first test flight of the new rocket, which will be more powerful than NASA’s mighty Saturn V moon rocket, is set for 2017.
EFT-1 is going to be an exciting flight. Hopefully, it won’t be a one-time thing like the Ares 1X was back in 2009.
ARB Orion
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Orion Spacecraft Water Impact Testing
Water impact test of an 18,000-pound (8,165 kilogram) test version of the Orion spacecraft at NASA’s Langley Research Center on Thursday, Aug. 23, 2012.
Swing drop testing began last summer at Langley’s Hydro Impact Basin to certify the Orion spacecraft for water landings. In this series of tests, Orion is being dropped vertically into the pool for the first time, which will help fine-tune the way NASA predicts Orion’s landing loads.
The Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System (SLS), NASA’s next crew capsule and heavy-lift rocket, will provide an entirely new capability for human exploration. Designed to be flexible for launching spacecraft for crew and cargo missions, SLS and Orion will expand human presence beyond low Earth orbit and enable new missions of exploration across the solar system.
Image Credit: NASA -
Standing watch over the antennas of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), Orion, the Hunter, shines high in the Chilean night sky.
With its distinctive hourglass shape and the three bright stars of Orion’s Belt in the centre, the constellation is easily recognisable. Taken from the southern hemisphere, this image shows Orion’s sword above the Belt. The sword is home to one of the most stunning features of the sky — the Orion Nebula — which appears as the middle “star” in the sword, its fuzzy nebulosity visible to the naked eye under good conditions.
The three ALMA antennas visible in the image represent only a small part of the complete ALMA array, which has a total of 66 antennas. ALMA combines the signals from its antennas, separated over distances of up to 16 kilometres, to form a single giant telescope, using a technique called interferometry.
(via scinerds)
