COVER-fin-jan2013_Layout 1 12/12/12 12:51 PM Page 1 1AEROSPACE AMERICA 1

January 2013 JANUARY 2013

SST research Breaking new barriers

LRO: Changing the face of the Moon Aircraft finance: Drought and flood?

A PUBLICATION OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF AERONAUTICS AND ASTRONAUTICS VIEWjan2013.qxd_Layout 1 12/11/12 11:41 AM Page 2

Bridge to deep space

IN A FISHING VILLAGE OFF THE REMOTE ers is a concept still current in the eries, and an increased operations north coast of Papua, New Guinea, most distant corners of the globe. tempo. U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong is a Between now and 2015, we will In September, the Expedition 33 household name. A young villager decide if we are to continue or aban- crew—Suni Williams, Aki Hoshide, and named Luke, who makes his living don that premise. The space talk at —performed two fishing and farming for his family on the close of the year has centered on unplanned EVAs to remove and re- Wanam, one of the tropical Tami Is- whether NASA has a new plan to place a failed main bus switching unit lands, had heard the news of Arm- match those heroic Apollo feats. The (MBSU). Located on the station’s S0 strong’s August 25 passing. president’s reelection and looming se- truss, just above the U.S. Destiny lab, “He was first to go to the Moon,” questration mean NASA—at best—can the MBSU suffered a failure that took said Luke, who was born about 20 expect no increases in its human down 25% of the station’s solar power years after the Eagle landed. Ques- spaceflight budget. capacity. tioned about my own space voyages, During the first EVA, Williams and I had to admit that Neil, Mike Collins, ISS troubleshooting and success Hoshide removed the failed MBSU and Buzz Aldrin had gone a thousand Before NASA can talk of returning to box, about the size of a dishwasher, times farther into space than I had. deep space, it must first preserve and and replaced it with a spare delivered But that didn’t matter to Luke or the then build on its investment in the ISS. earlier by shuttle. During the spare in- villagers I spoke to: I was an American The closing months of 2012 saw NASA stallation, however, the spacewalkers ‘space man,’ the same as Neil. The and its partners deal successfully with were unable to drive home the long idea that the U.S. is a nation of explor- unexpected repairs, new cargo deliv- bolt that engages mechanical and elec-

Expedition 33 commander participates in a 6-hr 38-min spacewalk outside the ISS on November 1, 2012. During the spacewalk, Williams and JAXA’s ventured outside to support ground-based troubleshooting of an ammonia leak.

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trical connections between the truss ISS controllers will look now for stable and the new MBSU. Mission Control in coolant levels to verify that the leak Houston had them temporarily strap was in the bypassed radiator. If the down the box, reenter the airlock, and leak persists, further EVA trouble- regroup for another try. shooting and repairs might be needed. Within a week, controllers work- ing with the crew had Williams and New cargo era Hoshide back outside to try a new ap- SpaceX’s second Dragon cargo vehicle proach. Working at vacuum, they used successfully reached the station in Oc- a spare bolt coated with grease to cap- tober, delivering 900 lb of cargo. Al- ture and remove metal shavings from though Dragon’s Falcon 9 booster suf- the threaded MBSU receptacle on the fered a Merlin engine shutdown truss; engineers think the shavings during its October 7 launch, the eight were the result of galling that occurred remaining first-stage engines fired when the MBSU was bolted onto the longer than planned and inserted truss in 1-g during original assembly. Dragon into a safe orbit. After its Oc- With the threads now lubricated and tober 10 rendezvous and berthing, the clear of debris, the crew used a man- crew packed the capsule with 1,700 lb ual torque wrench to carefully hand- of scientific samples, obsolete gear, drive the bolt, securing the MBSU to and trash. On October 28, Dragon de- the truss and engaging electrical and parted the station and executed a suc- cooling interfaces. Flight controllers cessful reentry and splashdown. The Soyuz rocket with Soyuz commander Oleg soon had full power restored. Analysis of the engine failure, Novitskiy, flight engineer Kevin Ford of NASA, On November 1, Expedition 33 which shattered an aerodynamic fair- and flight engineer Evgeny Tarelkin of ROSCOSMOS launches to the ISS on October 23, 2012, in commander Williams ventured outside ing on Falcon 9’s first-stage engine Baikonur, Kazakhstan, on Expedition 33/34. with Hoshide once again, this time to skirt, may delay SpaceX’s next cargo Credit NASA/Bill Ingalls. isolate a minuscule leak in one P6 so- run until May. NASA hopes the firm lar array’s ammonia coolant loop. will soon be joined on cargo runs by ent on the Soyuz, at least until 2016, to Flight controllers believe a micromete- Orbital Sciences and its cargo rotate expedition crews, who have orite or orbital debris impact punched spacecraft. A first test flight of Orbital’s maintained a continuous presence at a tiny hole in the channel 2B thermal new Antares rocket is due this spring, ISS for over 12 years. radiator lines. To avoid a low-ammo- and the company hopes to demon- Scientific research aboard ISS is nia-coolant shutdown of the 2B power strate a successful Cygnus cargo deliv- growing, although slowly (see www. channel, Williams and Hoshide by- ery to the ISS within six months. nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/re- passed the radiator with a spare The Dragon deliveries and a search/news.html). Talented, adapt- jumper line, handing over cooling du- cargo shipment supported able crews, along with a well-chosen ties to a long-stowed P6 radiator used the arrival of the crew. array of tools, spare parts, and robotic during early ISS construction. Commander Kevin Ford and flight en- capabilities, have enabled astronauts Both the bypass operation and ra- gineers Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny and cosmonauts to overcome every diator redeployment were successful. Tarelkin docked their Soyuz TMA-06M systems failure and challenge encoun- at the ISS on October 25. Ford as- tered so far. The ISS is an invaluable sumed command from Williams as she asset in LEO, well positioned to serve returned to Earth with Hoshide and as an exploration testbed while the Malenchenko on November 18. partners discuss possible ventures into In early December, the second trio deep space. of Expedition 34 astronauts was scheduled to launch from Baikonur on Glimmers of an Earth-Moon Soyuz TMA-07M. Chris Hadfield, Tom architecture Marshburn, and Roman Romanenko Press reports in September revealed would inaugurate in that NASA is evaluating a new strategy March and remain on station until May. to send astronauts to the lunar vicinity The administration has not moved and beyond. Using the Orion crew ve- The SpaceX Dragon commercial cargo craft is to accelerate NASA’s plans for com- hicle and the initial, 70-metric-ton ca- ready for release by the ISS's Canadarm2 robotic mercial astronaut transport to the out- pability of the Space Launch System arm on October 28 to allow it to head toward a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. post. The agency will remain depend- (SLS) heavy lifter, the agency could

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L-what? Why EM-L2? This gravitational equipotential point in the rotating Earth-Moon coordinate frame enables a spacecraft to hover some 60,000 km beyond the Moon using minimal pro- pellant. Looping around EM-L2 for several weeks in a long, lazy halo or- bit, visiting astronauts would have a direct view of the lunar far side, and could conduct intensive remote sens- ing investigations of that rugged hemisphere. They could also take di- rect ‘telepresence’ control of lunar far- side surface rovers, taking advantage of the slightly shorter radio time delay from L2 compared to terrestrial con- trollers. This virtual exploration pres- ence on the lunar surface is similar to what would be possible for Mars from a future astronaut outpost on the Mar- Exploration Flight Test 1 Orion, currently at Michoud Assembly Facility, will fly in 2014 to an altitude of tian moon Phobos. over 3,600 mi, more than 15 times farther away from Earth than the ISS. Orion will return home at a The most challenging activities for speed of 25,000 mph, almost 5,000 mph faster than any human spacecraft. Heat shield temperatures astronauts at L2 would be rendezvous will reach 4,000 F, higher than any crew vehicle since Apollo. Photo credit: NASA/Eric Bordelon. with and wide-ranging investigation of a captured NEA. A team funded by the reach lunar orbit or the Earth-Moon agency appears to be seeking White Keck Institute for Space Studies has Lagrange points shortly after 2020. House approval for an ambitious se- proposed a robotic, ion-driven space- While not as profound an achieve- ries of missions that build methodi- craft that would snare and then return ment as establishing a new Tranquility cally toward a versatile deep-space ca- a 7-m, 500-metric-ton NEA to cislunar Base or cruising to an asteroid, the pability. The building blocks of the space within a decade. The asteroid, concepts under discussion offer NASA plan come from existing, proven ISS placed into an EM-L2 halo orbit, a path beyond the space station with- hardware, commercial vehicles, and would be available for astronaut in- out dramatic expansion of its budget. spacecraft in development. These in- spection, sampling, dissection, grap- First come several key tests of clude the Orion multipurpose crew pling and anchoring demonstrations, NASA’s Orion crew vehicle. Its first vehicle, SLS, Atlas V, Delta IV-Heavy, and resource extraction. unmanned flight is scheduled for Sep- Ariane, Proton, Dragon/Cygnus cargo International and commercial enti- tember 2014, atop a Delta IV-Heavy. vehicles, ATV/HTV cargo vehicles, ties could send their own robotic craft The EFT-1 mission will test Orion sys- spare ISS modules, build-to-print ISS to sample and process the water, met- tems during two high-apogee Earth structures, and inflatable habitats. als, and other light elements in the as- orbits, ending in a reentry trajectory As a first step, an Orion crew teroid. This accessible resource, simi- that will subject the guidance, heat would circumnavigate or orbit the lar in composition to carbonaceous shield, and recovery systems to the Moon, as Apollo 8 astronauts did in chondrite meteorites, could kick-start speeds and temperatures they will en- 1968, but with an eye toward more an entire venture into using asteroidal counter on a future deep space return. ambitious voyages. A key piece of material to lower the cost of future ex- The second uncrewed Orion will hardware would be a small habitat, ploration. The NEA exploitation would fly atop the SLS on its first flight, late based on Alenia’s ISS MPLM cargo thoroughly prepare astronauts and in 2017. Under current plans, astro- canister, or perhaps a new inflatable flight controllers for expeditions to nauts would not fly an Orion until af- design. The SLS’s interim cryogenic larger, more distant asteroids. ter 2020. That’s just a few years before stage, based on the RL-10-powered The proposed deep space trans- NASA is to execute a piloted mission Centaur, would power Orion and portation system, modest at first but to a near-Earth asteroid (NEA). It’s habitat on a lunar trajectory. Instead of growing as budgets and partnerships hard to see how, with just a handful of a lunar orbit or landing profile, how- expand, would be flexible enough to deep space tests, NASA could be ever, this bare-bones vehicle would take on other cislunar missions. Astro- ready by 2025 to send astronauts sev- conduct a weeks-long mission beyond nauts could rendezvous with robotic eral million miles beyond the Moon. the Moon to the L2 Earth-Moon La- sample return missions from the To change that calculus, the space grange point. Moon, asteroids, and Mars, using

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Upgraded spacesuits could be “…I could see the entire Moon if I phased in to replace the 1980s shuttle looked in one direction. Turning my Car Rental version currently in use. Rugged yet head, I could see the entire Earth. The Reduce your travel costs with flexible, the new models would then view is impossible to see on the Earth substantial discounts. be ready for work at a captured aster- or on the Moon. I had to be far These extra benefits and money-saving enough away from both. In all of hu- services are just a few more examples man history, no one had been able to of how AIAA membership works for see what I could just by turning my you around the clock, throughout the head.” year. Al Worden experienced what all of For more information about additional us would hope to see, if only vicari- benefits of AIAA membership, contact ously. He lived suspended between Customer Service at: worlds, just as NASA now seems sus- Phone: 800.639.2422 pended between its brilliant past and 703.264.7500 (outside the U.S.) an uncertain future. If the U.S. can Fax: 703.264.7657 take small but real steps now toward E-mail: [email protected] exploring and exploiting cislunar space, we can turn a glimmer of deep Or visit the Membership section space travel into a limitless reality. of the AIAA Web site And people around the globe would On August 5, 1971, Apollo 15 command module learn the names of a new generation www.aiaa.org pilot Al Worden carried out the first deep space of explorers. Thomas D. Jones EVA from the Endeavour crew module. His all-too-brief EVA lasted 38 min 12 sec. [email protected] Photo credit NASA. www.AstronautTomJones.com

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