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After pedaling his bike to the island’s dunes in Melbourne Beach, Florida Institute of Technology Professor J. Travis Hunsucker saw the powerful Diana 1 moon rocket travel a fiery arc across the sky after midnight last month, flashing into a small dot on the top. Atlantic Ocean.
Now, the o*cean, assistant professor of engineering and marine sciences, told the amphibious transport fleet USS Portland in San Diego. On Sunday, he will help predict and analyze wave dynamics to guide NASA officials as they recover the Orion rocket’s broken capsule after it splashed into the Pacific Ocean.
“It’s like, whoa. I saw this vehicle drop from the horizon on our beach. We see these beautiful images of the moon’s orbit. And then, you’ll see it come into the well deck after four weeks,” Hunsucker said, referring to the lower level of the ship that will be flooded to load the box sails.
“On the other side of the United States of America I saw the future of the same engineering article, reading it in the ocean,” he said.
More:Artemis 1: NASA’s Orion breaks records in mid-track for deep space travel
More:NASA: Artemis rocket ‘eye-watering’ power damage to Mobile Launcher at KSC
The 321-foot Artemis I rocket blasted into the sky on Nov. 16 from pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center, lifting the undeveloped Orion capsule on an epic 1.3-mile trek looping twice around the moon.
Concluding the 25½-day mission, Artemis’ Orion capsule will slow from a dizzying 25,000 mph – nearly a dozen times faster than a gun bullet – to 300 mph after entering Earth’s atmosphere. The heat shield of the capsule must reach 5,000 degrees Celsius or twice the temperature of the molten lava.
After deploying a series of parachutes, NASA engineers predict the 11-by-16-foot capsule will slow to about 20 mph before falling to the ground and striking the surface of the sea in sight of the distressed recovery ship, 50 to 60 nautical miles from San Diego. coast
In the splashdown, Melissa Jones, NASA’s Artemis descent and recovery director, said, “we’re going crazy with the capsule,” as pieces of cast iron that could sink deep into the ocean. This includes the space envelope of the front bay envelope ring, which protects parachutes and other soft goods during reentry.
“NASA has data on everything. And we’ll also have a crew on the next mission. So this flight test is key for us to get the data back,” said Jones.
Comprised of approximately 95 people, the Orion landing and recovery team includes on-board amphibious technicians piloting inflatable boats; NASA engineers and technicians from KSC and the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas; Air Force severe weather; and Lockheed Martin Space Operations personnel. A team of helicopters from nearby Naval Air Station North Island will provide aerial coverage.
Portland will approach the bobbing Orion and use different sensors to “check the smell” for hydrazine or ammonia leaking from the capsule, Jones said. Then Navy personnel pulled the lines to the Orion and flooded the ship’s well with about 6 feet of seawater, a tow rope floating in space through a stern port lowered into a specially designed cradle.
Later, Portland will transport the capsule to a pier at Naval Base San Diego.
Jones said the primary splashdown site is located in the navy’s lecture area — a move designed to keep recreational boats at bay. In August 2020, the private spacecraft will launch and launch the SpaceX Crew Dragon attempt after landing in the Gulf of Mexico near Pensacola with astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley.
The Orion crew module is designed to carry four astronauts to deep space on future missions within a habitable space of 330 cubic feet. Jones said Sunday that the recovery team is still driving to try to recover the three main parachute capsules for scientific analysis.
Jones said the recovery team had about six hours to collect samples and photos and conduct evaluations and collect evidence before towing the untreated casing into the well. This will include approximately 1½ hours of footage documenting the condition of the heat shield before it reaches anything inside Portland.
Three mannequins were equipped with Orion sensors for the purpose of testing. On the other hand, Artemis II launched four astronauts into a lunar rover.
Liliana Villarreal, who will direct NASA’s capsule-recovery mission for that mission, said the Artemis II astronauts will be launched in open water from the Orion crater before the crew module is submerged in the Navy ship – and the astronauts must return to the ship’s medical bay within two hours.
“It’s completely different. We’ll have a lot of equipment there to turn it off before we can do it,” Villarreal said. “Interfaces with the suits are the crew that make us connect to disconnect the rate to get out of the vehicle safely.”
Jones: The NASA leadership career was ‘in my blood’.
Jones was born and raised in Oak Hill, a small Volusia County city of about 2,000 residents on US 1 just north of KSC and the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.
Because of his family’s deep ties to Cape, he suspects his NASA career is “in my blood.” As a kid, he thought space travel was normal: “I kind of grew up thinking that walking into the front yard and looking up at the launch was normal, I guess.”
“My grandfather was a security guard at KSC, and my grandmother worked in a gift shop. My father was a program manager at Titan. What kind of NASA inspector was my mother,” said Jones.
While attending the University of Central Florida, Jones recorded receiving a phone call in February 2003 from his mother, Sue Hutchinson, who was standing at the 15,000-foot Radius Landing Facility waiting for the Columbia shuttle to return to Cape Town.
And he called me and woke me up, saying: “Get up and put my words.” She herself had hung up. And he went out there the rest of the day, “Iones recalled.
Columbia tragically broke up during atmospheric reentry over Texas, killing all seven astronauts.
In January 2004, Jones joined NASA’s Space Shuttle program as a contractor on its return flight mission, which ended with the successful launch of Discovery in July 2005. From 2007, he was born to engineer a lead orbiter for the shuttle.
Jones is NASA’s first KSC-based recovery capsule: its Apollo-era counterparts are based in Texas at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“I’m really the first person who’s ever done this job before — and we haven’t done it in over 50 years. It’s an honor to be chosen to do this,” Jones said.
“The foundation of the space was laid by my family, and I will continue the legacy. And I hope my kids see that, and they also want to continue,” he said.
Splashdown weather, waves are major factors
Hunsucker spent the days leading up to Sunday’s breakdown working on a wave forecast along the coast of San Diego, where the Pacific swell can spread across a wide swath of the world from Alaska to the Southern Hemisphere.
Over the past four years, I have been examining Orion-recovery wave forecasting with the Johnson Space Center meteorology group, particularly NASA’s recovery exercises, using toy capsules. A critical part of his job: Position Portland to minimize waves inside the ship’s well.
“You have this 700-foot-long ship that’s been hit by waves. It starts running. Inside the ship, it’s well laid out. It also has waves that are generated by the motion of the ship,” Hunsucker said. he said.
“My role is to understand how ocean waves affect the motion of a ship, how the motion of a well-decked ship affects waves, and in turn how well-decked crew modules affect them,” he said.
NASA’s Orion recovery team completed a three-day “final review” exercise at sea last week aboard the ship in Portland using a capsule mockup. Jones Johnson Space Center personnel said they will choose the site for Sunday’s splashdown based on weather conditions and flight regulations that feature “sea state” requirements for wave action and “high winds” signals for the parachutes to function properly.
If conditions are favorable, Orion could alternatively splash as far south as the Catalina Islands near Los Angeles, NASA Flight Director Judd Frieling said during the briefing Monday. Or Orion could land “shortly” about 1,000 nautical miles south of San Diego. This trio of splashdown locations is described as a Plan A/Plan B/Plan C menu of options.
Balloons attached to a red box are prominent features of the crew’s module system rolling among ocean waves, said Carla Rekucki, director of test lead with NASA’s Ground Systems Exploration Program.
Hunsucker, who works under contract with Jacobs Technology, said the Portland capital also depends on the shape and direction of incoming waves. He likened the exercise to pushing a vehicle through a parking lot littered with sledgehammers.
“I think everyone hopes we land well on a calm, flat, calm day,” Hunsucker said.
Watch it live on floridatoday.com
NASA’s Orion capsule is expected to splashdown at 12:40 pm EST Sunday, Dec. 11. Live coverage on floridatoday.com starting at 11 am
Rick Neale is the South Brevard Watchdog Reporter at FLORIDA TODAY (for more stories, click here.) Contact Neale at 321-242-3638 or rneale@floridatoday.com. Twitter: @RickNeale1
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