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Hi, I'm Maria and this is NASA Now.
In 2011, NASA administrator Charles Bolden announced
that NASA was focusing on deep space exploration.
This bold initiative includes the development
of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle
that will propel humans farther into space than ever before.
We'll talk with an expert about her role in developing mockups
of the MPCV and what considerations go
into making the next phase of deep space exploration vehicles.
That's ahead, first here's what's happening at NASA Now.
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Testing continues on the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle.
NASA successfully conducted a drop test
of the Orion crew vehicle's entry, descent
and landing parachutes in preparation
for Exploration Flight Test 1, in 2014.
A C-130 plane dropped a dart-shaped test vehicle
with a simulated Orion parachute compartment from an altitude
of 25,000 feet above the U.S. Army's Yuma Proving Grounds.
Orion's drogue chutes were deployed at 20,000 feet,
followed by the pilot parachutes,
which then deployed the main landing parachutes.
The test vehicle landed on the desert floor at a speed
of almost 25 feet per second,
well below the maximum designed touchdown speed
of the spacecraft.
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Designing, modeling, and testing are all critical components
of the engineering process.
Today, we are going to hear firsthand what kind
of effort goes into creating a realistic mockup
of a spacecraft destined for deep space.
Christie Sauers, who is the Mockups Lead
on the Orion MPCV Cockpit Working Group,
will tell us how her group translates engineering designs
into functional mockups for testing and research.
The Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle is a new spacecraft
that NASA is working on to take humans beyond low Earth orbit,
to Mars, to asteroids, returning to the moon
and so we need a spacecraft to service
as that transportation vehicle
and that's what the MPCV is designed to do.
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The MPCV has many components.
The primary segment that I work on is the crew module,
which is that capsule where the crew spends their time in orbit.
But some of the other important parts
of the MPCV mission includes your launch vehicle
with its rockets that help get you up into orbit
with multiple stages that complete that process.
Then once on orbit, you still have that capsule
but you also a service module that's attached to it
and that service module has a lot of the various systems,
thrusters, consumables that are needed.
If you were doing a lunar mission and actually landing
on the moon, you would need with the crew module to dock
with a lander-type vehicle and actually use
that lander to land on the moon.
Once your astronauts were done on the moon they would return
to the crew module and from there do their transfer back
to Earth orbit and finally their re-entry to Earth.
And it's a total of three main chutes
that then allow the crew module to softly land.
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One area that I focus on is creating full-size mockups
in which we can actually bring the spacecraft design to life
and get in and test out the design,
make sure that it meets the requirements
that the astronauts can reach everything they need to,
they have enough volume to get it done,
that they can do it in an efficient way.
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In order to create a full-size mockup of the flight design,
is to first get a hold of the CAD models
that that flight design is based on and be able
to build your own replicas of them
to mimic the overall critical dimensions.
Especially the user interfaces that are so critical
in assessing the human use of the hardware.
And so then, we basically will redesign the flight type
components into manufacturable, lower cost hardware
that we can build and put in the mockups.
Having those components built assembling them, testing them,
making sure from the lowest perspective
that we have safe sound design that nobody is going
to get injured in our mockups.
Of course, all along the way we're going
through review processes of the design, of the final hardware,
and then eventually the hardware needs
to be installed in the mockups.
And then ultimately, used by our engineers and astronauts
and also just as familiarization tool for any folks
on the program to come and learn more about Orion.
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During launch, the crew could see up to around 3g
on their body, you know, we're in a 1g environment on Earth
and so they're going to have that sense in their seats
on launch of being pressed back into the seats
and it really feels like you have an elephant pressed
on your chest as you're launching in that vehicle.
And so, the normal types of activities you would do
with your arms being able to, say, control your car,
the steering wheel, the radio, all those different things all
of a sudden your arms do not have that freedom of movement,
the way we would normally expect to and so the design
of the vehicle needs to account for that.
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You just saw how everything that goes into space is designed
for safety, function and efficiency.
Try this project on for size.
Teachers, here's a way to have your students test their
engineering design skills using simple products.
Look for Engineering Design Challenge:
Spacecraft Structures.
You'll find it on the NASA Explorer Schools'
Virtual Campus.
Well that's it for NASA Now,
be sure to visit our Facebook page and leave a comment.
We'll see you next time on NASA Now.
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NASA Now comes to you from the Virtual Campus
at NASA Explorer Schools.