>> NASA's in the process
of designing its next generation spacecraft Orion,
which will be able to take astronauts
to far off destinations like an asteroid
and eventually one day Mars.
Orion itself is gearing up for its first flight into space;
exploration flight-test one.
That test going to be taking place in the fall
of this year 2014, but this week we're also doing a lot
of prep work and one important test to get ready for that.
Here to tell us a little bit more is Mike Serafin,
one of NASA's flight directors
and someone who's involved pretty heavily
in the test this week, and that test is underway recovery test.
I don't know if it has a number.
Is it one or are we just going
to call it underway recovery test?
>> It is just the underway recovery test.
>> Okay.
>> So we are performing a test as a joint partnership
with the United States Navy, Lockheed Martin and NASA.
This week the crew of the USS San Diego a Navy vessel
out of the Port of San Diego have sailed
out into the Pacific off the coast of California
and they are going to demonstrate the ability
to recover Orion this week.
And me and my team are going to be here in Mission Control
and we're going to demonstrate the hand
over process of the Orion capsule.
Here in Mission Control we're responsible
for the Orion spacecraft from liftoff to splash down
and in final power down, and we're going to hand
over the spacecraft to the recovery team.
Orion like Apollo is designed to land on water and not on land.
So we need a ship to go out there and recover it,
and through this joint agreement we're going to go demonstrate
that this week and make sure that we're ready to go
for the exploration flight test one this fall.
>> And so what are some
of the things the recovery teams are going to be testing,
responsible for out there tomorrow?
>> Yeah, so we are using a new design of ship
that did not exist in the Apollo era.
Its call the well deck ship.
So the Orion capsule being larger than the Apollo capsule,
there was some concern about using a crane over the side
of the ship to basically raise it over off the water
onto the deck of the ship.
So folks went off and assessed various options and we looked
at a well deck ship and that was the plan that we're going
to try out here on EFT1.
Well deck is basically an area within the belly of the ship
that they can flood and they'll open a stern gate which is much
like the tailgate on a pickup truck, and tow the Orion capsule
into the well deck and then close the stern gate
and then drain the well deck lower the Orion capsule
onto a recovery cradle.
So they're going to demonstrate that capability.
They're also going to demonstrate the ability to spot
and recover things that have been jettisoned off
of the Orion capsule during the final descent and landing phase
like the forward bay cover and parachutes.
And go retrieve some of those as engineering test articles.
So it's a large integrated operation
and we haven't done this for quite a while
and we certainly haven't done it with this class of ship
or with a capsule this large so we're going to check it out,
demonstrate it and make sure that we're ready to go.
>> And Mike you'll be the flight director in the room right
down the hall from here leading the team.
What are you guys going to be doing in that?
>> Right, so my team --
it's a small team of roughly two-dozen folks that are going
to be here in Mission Control on flight day responsible for Orion
from liftoff to splash down.
Are going to be monitoring the health and status
of Orion during the mission and if we see anything off nominal
that the spacecraft is not designed to handle
on it's own we're going to do what we say --
send commands to the spacecraft
or issue computerized instructions to it
to safe things like propellant leak or issues
that could potentially occur, and make sure
that the spacecraft is safe to handle by the recovery team.
Those folks on board the Navy vessel are going
to put themselves in harms way and I want to make sure that me
and my team tell them everything that we know about it
so that they're safe and can take precautionary measures
if necessary.
>> And so to switch gears a little bit,
we haven't really had to train to handle a new vehicle.
Well aside from the cargo vehicles recently
but not really a new crew vehicle in a long time.
What's the training been like to get ready for Orion,
to get the flight control team ready to handle this new craft?
>> Yeah, I'll admit that I was a little bit spoiled
as a space shuttle flight controller
and a shuttle flight director, and then coming
over here doing international space station operations.
I always had a baseline to work off of
and it was largely a sustaining operation
where you could use the previous mission or the previous flight
and use that to delta your work off of.
So you never started from scratch.
But with a brand new program like we're flying here
on Orion you are starting form scratch.
>> Yeah.
>> So all of the capabilities that we're using
in mission control, all the products, all of the tools,
all the software, all the communication capabilities we're
having to develop and test and check out from scratch.
We're obviously leveraging a lot of the capabilities
that we had during the space shuttle era and have during --
currently in mission control as part
of the space station program to minimize costs
and overhead associated with that,
but because Orion talks differently via it's telemetry
stream and because it ahs different capabilities
on board we've got to develop a lot of new things from scratch
and we're in the process of testing and checking all
that out right now, and again that's to make sure
that we're ready to go and fly this fall.
>> Team getting excited for this fall?
>> Yeah. Yeah, the teams excited.
I came on board the Orion program about two years ago
and when I was introduced to the team I was really excited
because all of the folks that I'm working with I've worked
with in the past during my space shuttle career.
So they are a veteran team that we are using
to fly the Orion spacecraft here out of Mission Control.
Very capable, very dedicated
and also a very small team as I said before.
And the sheer volume of work.
We're having to work really hard, really fast.
A development program always has unexpected events
or surprises that come up.
Software doesn't always work as designed and we're having
to tweak things here on the ground as well as with some --
based on some flight software updates that we're getting
through our avionics and software counterparts.
Things that we learn in testing we always learn
about design features that we have
to modify our planned operation, our tools around
and the team's doing a really good job adapting to that
and working really hard.
>> I'm sure they'll be ready.
Okay, well again the underway recovery test taking place
tomorrow on Thursday, February 20th.
An important recovery of Orion
from the water joint with the U.S. Navy.
All that in preparation for the upcoming exploration flight-test
one later this year.
Mike, thanks for joining me.
Really looking forward to that flight.
>> Yeah, thanks for joining us from Mission Control. ------------------------------2fbad779abdb--