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Hi everybody I'm Ty Fredricks from Orcutt Academy High School
in Orcutt California and this Is NASA Now.
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Hi I'm John.
You might be surprised to discover there is more to NASA
than space exploration.
In fact chances are the planes you fly
on today contain technology
that was developed and tested at NASA.
In this episode we will talk with an expert
about the special testing facility NASA uses
to improve the performance and efficiency of jet engines.
That's ahead, but first here's what's happening at NASA Now.
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A flying dragon resupplies the International Space Station
and breathes life into new discoveries.
Well, not exactly.
. . but on March 3rd, 2013 NASA
and SpaceX successfully docked the Dragon space capsule
to the International Space Station.
This is the second in a series of efforts by the U.S.
to transport supplies to and from the Station
since the Shuttle's retirement.
The un-crewed vehicle delivered more than twelve hundred pounds
of supplies and research experiments and personal items
to the Expedition 34 crew.
Dragon is expected to return to Earth on March 25th,
when it will splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast
of Baja (Ba-ha), California.
Inside it will bring back more than twenty-six hundred pounds
of science samples and educational activities.
The knowledge gained from these materials is expected
to expand NASA's capabilities
for future long duration space missions.
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Everyday NASA is advancing our capabilities in space.
At the same time NASA is working on making air travel safer
and more fuel efficient.
Today we are going to visit Queito Thomas a test operations
engineer at the NASA Glenn Research Center.
Queito works in the Propulsion Systems Laboratory where some
of the most sophisticated jet engines are put
through extensive testing.
Welcome to the Propulsion Systems Laboratory,
cell number three!
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The Propulsion Systems Laboratory is an engine test
facility where we test jet engines,
and we simulate the conditions that the actual engine
or aircraft would see while it's in flight.
We simulate altitudes from sea level up to 90,000 feet.
We can test jet engines ranging in size from that
of a small engine that goes into a RC aircraft
up to a military jet engine that goes into fighters.
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We're able to vary the temperature in the facility
to simulate altitudes.
The air at ground level on a day
like today is currently 60 degrees outside.
Above 36,089 feet, up to say, 70, 80,000 feet,
the temperature will be minus 40.
We can go from a Mach of zero, which is the air
that we are breathing currently up to Mach three.
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The reason for these facilities, and for the tests
that we run here, are that it's more cost effective
to run a jet engine in these conditions
because the conditions are set and they are fixed.
Here we are able to set an altitude,
hold that altitude, hold the temperature.
And we're able to put a lot more instrumentation
on an engine here versus putting it on an aircraft
where you're limited on how much you can put on it
because it's on a flight asset.
In this facility, we can monitor up to 2,000 parameters.
We also have the capability of measuring
up to 8,000 calculated channels.
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This particular cell is being set up to do icing research.
The icing research that we will be doing is
that we will be shooting not only ice particles
at a live rotating engine,
but we'll also be doing what's called mixed phase
with ice and water.
The reason that this is such an emphasis is
that the FAA is changing the rules
for certification for icing on engines.
With the icing testing, we actually want
to cause the issues that they've seen up while flying
on certain aircraft or certain engines,
and so we can better understand the phenomenon,
and come up with ways to either prevent it, mitigate it,
or eliminate it entirely.
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An engine is basically using conservation
of energy what you do on one side, you have to balance
that at the other side, so when you bring air into the engine,
you're increasing pressure.
And from physics, pressure and velocity,
are inversely proportional.
So as I take the air into the compressor,
I'm increasing that pressure.
I'm decreasing the velocity and sending
that air into the combustor.
And once it hits the combustor, I mix it with fuel,
give it an ignition source, a spark, which then ignites it,
that air now increases in velocity decreases in pressure.
It then spins the turbine
and that air then exits the exhaust of the engine.
And because of conservation of energy,
even though I'm changing the states of the air,
or changing the properties of it I still have to balance it
so by decreasing my pressure at the end,
I'm increasing my velocity, which balances the energy.
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Wow that is some pretty amazing technology just to make it safer
and more efficient for people to travel by air.
Do you think you have what it takes
to build a model jet engine?
Teachers you and your students can get a real feel
for how a jet engine works by building your own model.
To try this out in your classroom look
for Jet Propulsion by checking out the extension activity
for this program 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.