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Recent \u2013 over the past one year period \u2013 Ares I-X Articles on NASASpaceflight.com can be found on this link:
\nhttp:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/tag\/ares-i-x\/<\/p>\n\u201cThe team should get a first look at the riser lines Friday afternoon but it will be several days before the chutes are detangled and available for analysis. Likewise, the booster must complete safing before more detailed analysis of the hardware can begin.\u201d<\/p>\n
All that is known at this time is one of the three main parachutes failed after deployment and interfered with a second parachute \u2013 resulting in only one main chute being able to provide its full deceleration capability prior to splashdown.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"A8\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/A81.jpg\" "\\"A8\\"")
\u201cWhat we know currently is that almost immediately after main parachute deploy and prior to any reefing, one of the mains gives way on its riser lines and streams out,\u201d added the memo.<\/p>\n\u201cA cloud obscured part of the visuals during deploy but it appears that the streaming chute entangles with another of the mains, keeping it from full canopy. The result was only about 1 and 1\/2 parachute capability for decelerating the booster.\u201d<\/p>\n
UPDATE: A follow up article will follow next week, following the acquiring of the full chase plane video (uploaded to L2 on Saturday) from ascent, staging, parachute deploy and splashdown. NASA has since released the video to Youtube on Monday.<\/p>\n
Such incidents with the booster parachutes are not uncommon, with a loss of one main chute suffered by STS-128\u2019s Right Hand booster, resulting in that booster hitting the ocean at a high velocity. However, it avoided any major damage.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of three RH main parachutes failed to fully inflate. Data Acquisition System (DAS) indicated failure occurred 3.9 seconds after frustum separation. Postflight inspection revealed damage on gore number 5 extending from above vent band to skirt band,\u201d noted the STS-128 SRB IFA (In Flight Anomaly) presentation into the incident.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, with only one main chute operating nominally, Ares I-X\u2019s First Stage not only hit the ocean at high speed, but also at an angle, causing it to buckle on impact \u2013 as seen in recovery photographs that circulated a number of sites on Thursday, including a high resolution set of images on L2.<\/p>\n
![\"A6\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/A64.jpg\" "\\"A6\\"")
\u201cPhotos of Ares I-X First Stage damage were taken by the USA recovery team. The \u2018dent\u2019 photos are actually of buckling of the booster versus denting,\u201d added the memo.<\/p>\n\u201cThe buckling is a result of the hard impact of the booster with the water. The hard impact is the result of a main parachute failure. We do not yet know why the chute failed. That will take some time and in depth analysis.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe booster both hit the water hard and at an angle. Buckling is to be expected in this situation. The photo of the fractured actuator bracket is also to be expected \u2013 the actuator bracket is designed to break loose on hard impact, thereby protecting the actuator from damage. The forward skirt extension that housed the chutes sank immediately upon water impact \u2013 as designed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although the objective of Ares flights will be to recover and reuse the five segment boosters that will provide first stage power to the launch vehicle, the now-damaged four segment \u2013 and fifth segment simulator \u2013 booster from Ares I-X was never planned to be reused.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a reminder, the motor segments and aft skirt used for Ares I-X are retired shuttle assets and there was no intent to use them again. We will learn a great deal from this test flight anomaly \u2013 that is why we test!\u201d<\/p>\n
Interestingly, ATK \u2013 who build the boosters \u2013 were already aware of the threat of damage to the First Stage from increased splashdown loads on the larger Ares I five segment booster, and had been evaluating alternate stiffener configurations for the aft segment.<\/p>\n
The mitigation also involved a proposed ETM-4 and ETM-5 as block upgrades to the five segment designs. ETM-4 would substitute an HTPB propellant formulation and a new strip wound insulation package. ETM-5 would be filament wound segments with metallic joints and dome segments.<\/p>\n
In fact, the very notion of being able to recover the Ares I First Stage has been close to deletion since at least 2008 \u2013 part of the goal to save the mass involved for the recovery systems, as Ares I struggled to make up the performance shortfalls that has plagued the vehicle over most of its recent years of development.<\/p>\n
Pad 39B Damage:<\/p>\n
![\"A3\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/A318.jpg\" "\\"A3\\"")
Engineers had already noted that Ares I-X would launch at a slight angle \u2013 only by a few degrees \u2013 in order to clear\/avoid the Fixed Service Structure (FSS) at the pad, prior to the Thrust Vector Control (TVC) correcting the vehicle through the opening seconds of ascent.<\/p>\nThe downside of such a flight profile results in the exhaust of the First Stage impinging on the FSS for a few seconds.<\/p>\n
This concern was already well-known with the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) pad workers, with the main item of interest relating to a potential impact with the ET\/IT platform area, which nearly led to its removal during shuttle to Constellation modifications to 39B.<\/p>\n
In the end, Ares I-X departed the pad as planned, with the TVC ably controlling the vehicle away from the pad and into its correct flight profile.<\/p>\n
Normally, a shuttle launch results in some burnt paint, blast effects on the MLP, an occasional cracked or broken gauge. However, 39B has suffered a large amount of damage from the heat and blast of the First Stage\u2019s exhaust.<\/p>\n
![\"A2\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/A223.jpg\" "\\"A2\\"")
The first engineers to take a close look at the pad were those involved with the SCAPE (Self-Contained Atmospheric Protection Ensemble) operations, following damage to several hypergolic lines at the pad.<\/p>\nHowever, due to the impact of Ares I-X\u2019s thrust on the FSS, the pad\u2019s two elevators were both damaged, meaning SCAPE engineers had to climb three flights of stairs \u2013 in their SCAPE suits \u2013 in order to fix the hypergolic leaks.<\/p>\n
One elevator has now been repaired, but the other will take \u201cweeks\u201d to fix due to the extent of what is being described as substantial damage.<\/p>\n
While the 95\u2032 level on the FSS suffers damage from almost every shuttle launch \u2013 since the Mobile Launch Platform 0\u2032 level acts as a blast deflector \u2013 Ares I-X managed to impact the entire FSS on 39B.<\/p>\n
All of the communication lines were destroyed during launch \u2013 along with all the outdoor megaphone\/speakers melted beyond recognition \u2013 resulting in temporary communication lines being set up throughout the pad.<\/p>\n
Heat damage has also been noted from the hinge columns through to the Rotating Service Structure (RSS), and a set of photographs acquired by L2 show extensive heat damage to nearly all areas of the vehicle-facing RSS.<\/p>\n
![\"A5\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/A58.jpg\" "\\"A5\\"")
Of course, Pad 39B won\u2019t be used again for many years, with the next scheduled launch set to be the Ares I-Y test flight \u2013 although that vehicle is under severe and imminent threat of being cancelled, even if the Ares program survives the post-Augustine Commission decisions that will be evaluated by President Obama over the next few months..<\/p>\nThe lesson\u2019s learned from the damage to 39B will likely go some way into the forward plan for the largescale modifications to Pad 39B ahead of hosting Ares I launches, in order to keep maintenance and costs down between missions.<\/p>\n
The final 39B configuration will include a massive rollercoaster EES system that will dominate the skyline as a fixed structure out at the pad complex.<\/p>\n
L2 members<\/em><\/em>: Documentation \u2013 from which the above article has quoted snippets \u2013 is available in full in the related L2 sections, now over 4000 gbs in size.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pad workers have begun to evaluate what is being described as substantial heat damage to Pad 39B, following the launch of Ares I-X. Meanwhile, the damage to Ares I-X\u2019s First Stage was the result of splashing down at high speed and at an angle, due to only \u201cone and a half\u201d of its three main […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9203],"class_list":["post-40950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-ares-i-x"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40950"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40950\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}