Delays postpone NASA’s Orion manned capsule test launch

THE Orion manned space probe, which NASA says is the first step to Mars, has postponed until tomorrow after multiple delays.

THE first test launch of NASA’s new deep space capsule, Orion, was postponed a day due to wind gusts and technical issues with the rocket, the US space agency said.

After multiple aborts in the nearly three-hour launch window on Thursday, NASA decided to try again Friday beginning at 7:05am local time from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

No astronauts were aboard the capsule — meant to carry humans to an asteroid or Mars in the coming years — for this initial flight test.

First, a boat in the waters off the Florida coast delayed the launch, then wind gusts, and finally, problems with the valves on the rocket boosters.

Trying again...a December 4 NASA photo shows Orion atop a Delta IV Heavy rocket at Cape Canaveral. Picture: AFP PHOTO/NASA

“Despite the valiant attempts of the launch team and mission managers around the country, we basically ran out of time in trying to troubleshoot,” said NASA spokesman Mike Curie.

The delay disappointed thousands of tourists and space enthusiasts who lined the area known as Florida’s Space Coast to see the takeoff of the Delta IV Heavy rocket powered by three boosters.

The capsule’s four-and-a-half hour test flight is due to carry the spacecraft around the Earth twice before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.

Great view ... Photographers take up position before the scrubbing of the mornings attempt at launching the mission. Picture: Joe Raedle/Getty Images/AFP

The launch is the first of a US spacecraft meant to carry people into deep space in more than four decades, since the Apollo missions that brought men to the Moon.

With no American vehicle to send humans to space since the space shuttle was retired in 2011, some at NASA said the Orion launch has re-energised the US space program, long constrained by government belt-tightening and forced to rely on costly rides aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft to reach the International Space Station in low-Earth orbit.

Potential future missions for Orion, which can fit four people at a time, include a trip to lasso an asteroid and a journey to Mars by the 2030s.

Mars mission ... the United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket with NASA’s Orion spacecraft at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Picture: AFP PHOTO / NASA / Bill Ingalls

Two laps around Earth

The launch aims to propel 1.63 million pounds (739,000 kilograms) of spacecraft, rocket and fuel straight into space, where the capsule was due to make two laps around the Earth before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean around 11:30am (1630 GMT).

The first orbit was to be about as high as the International Space Station, which circles at an altitude of about 270 miles (430 kilometres), but the second would soar 15 times higher, to an apogee of 3,600 miles above the Earth.

The chief contractor of the Orion capsule is Lockheed Martin. The spacecraft was first designed to take humans to the Moon as part of NASA’s Constellation program, which was cancelled by President Barack Obama in 2010, in favour of seeking new destinations in deep space.

The goal is both nebulous and costly, and NASA has already spent $9.1 billion on Orion and the powerful rocket meant to propel it with crew on board, the Space Launch System (SLS).

Another unmanned test flight is slated for 2018. The first Orion test flight with people on board is scheduled for 2021, and costs are projected to reach $19-22 billion.

The primary objective of the first flight test, according to Orion program manager Mark Geyer, is to see how the heat shield performs as it reaches temperatures of 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,200 Celsius) on its high-speed plunge back to Earth at a velocity of 20,000 miles per hour

Bright spark ... NASA’s Orion spacecraft is seen in the distance early morning at Cape Canaveral air force. Picture: AFP PHOTO / NASA / Bill Ingalls

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NASA, which has been unable to send men into space since the retirement of its Space Shuttle fleet and a string of deep budget cuts over the past decade, is facing increasing competition from a world still fascinated by space flight.

And the budget cuts keep on coming: the US Senate is again questioning the value of the government funded space exploration program, pointing instead to the potential of private corporate ventures.

Systems are go ... the Orion space capsule is seen atop a Delta IV rocket ready for a test launch at the Cape Canaveral air force Station. Source: AP

China also has been striving towards establishing its own manned space station, and last night Japan launched the ambitious Hayabusa space probe to bring back samples from an asteroid.

Mars remains NASA’s last great hope for exploration glory.

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“It is truly a beautiful planet. It has fabulous vistas. It has a number of resources that we are finding out about, and we are planning to move toward human exploration of Mars,” Jim Green, NASA’s Planetary Science Division director, said during a news briefing held jointly in Washington and Kennedy Space Center.

Source: NASA

Yet the Orion, and the Space Launch System rocket being developed for a 2018 launch, are only the first steps. Development of human life support, fuel, communication and Martian landing systems are in much earlier development.

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Those challenges and budget concerns leave NASA officials saying they hope to reach Mars sometime in the 2030s.

The overriding challenge is that it would take astronauts more than a year to get there, so they’ll have to take everything they need or have it waiting for them along the way, said Jason Crusan, director of NASA’s Advanced Exploration Systems Division.

“We describe it as going from an Earth-reliant to an Earth-independent phase,” Crusan said.

Among the challenges:

The agency thinks it impractical to carry enough liquid or solid fuel. So NASA is exploring high-powered solar-electric engines to propel Orion through space. That could be viable by the end of this decade, said James Reuther, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for space-technology mission programs.

Step backward to go forwards ... The Orion manned space capsule harks back to NASA’s glory days with the Apollo Program. Source: NASA

NASA’s current communication systems are radio-based and only carry a tiny fraction of the information necessary. The agency is working on laser-based optical-communication technologies. It could be workable by the early 2020s, Reuther said.

To land on Mars, NASA plans to adapt technologies used to land the Curiosity Martian rover two years ago. Scaling that to handle a far-heavier human craft may not happen until the early 2030s, he said.

NASA must develop living quarters for the astronauts’ long journeys and for stays in orbit around Mars and on that planet. The agency is considering sending up habitats in advance, placing them in orbit near Earth’s moon, in orbit around Mars and on Mars’ surface. Orion astronauts could use them on the way, Crusan said.

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Despite the challenges, tonight Orion is set to fly farther than any human-rated spacecraft since the Apollo moon program, aiming for a distance of 5,800 kilometres, more than 14 times higher than the International Space Station.

That peak altitude will provide the necessary momentum for a 32,200km/h 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 5 meters across, is the largest of its kind ever built.