The American Space Agency (NASA) carried out a battery of tests of its Orion spacecraft throughout almost the entire year 2025. Finally, the spacecraft was subject to the use of explosive charges as part of a simulation of emergency evacuation.
The ultimate test of the Orion ship
Let us first recall that the Orion space vehicle was designed to transport a crew of four astronauts beyond low Earth orbit. This transport will last for three weeks, as part of the Artemis 2 mission. Just like the Apollo spacecraft in the 1970s, its role will be to transport astronauts to lunar orbit before bringing them back to Earth.
NASA is finalizing the final preparations for this mission and has even just complete eleven months of testing his shipthe aim being to evaluate its limits. As explained in a press release dated December 17, 2024, the team in charge of the safety of the machine carried out a emergency evacuation simulation at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland (United States).
You should know that the ship must be able to separate from the rest of the rocketin the event of a problem during takeoff. However, this separation must be done by means of explosive charges. Then, parachutes as well as huge airbags must allow the machine to land and float on the ocean.
Satisfactory results
As project manager Robert Overy indicates, this last test was that of “maximum stress”in other words the highest load that any system can experience. Engineers simulated the noise levels of an abort during launch using the Reverberant Acoustic Test Facility, in addition to the electromagnetic effects of lightning. The test seems to have given satisfactionin terms of the separation of the vessel but also with regard to the deployment of parachutes and airbags.
-“It’s a successful test campaign. The data matched the prediction models, and everything performed as expected after being subjected to nominal acoustic and launch abort levels. We are still analyzing the data, but preliminary results show that the vehicle and installation performed as expected. »said Robert Overy.
Finally, if NASA thinks it has carried out all possible tests, the Orion spacecraft not ready to leave yet. Indeed, the Artemis program schedule changes regularly. For now, the Artemis 2 mission initially planned for summer 2025 should finally begin in spring 2026.
Belgium
