NASA Takes Strides Forward to Launch Americans from U.S. Soil

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NASA Takes Strides Forward to Launch Americans from U.S. Soil

01.25.13

 

Image above: Lunar Module-1 is being moved into position for mating with Spacecraft Lunar Module Adapter in the Kennedy Space Center's Manned Spacecraft Operations Building. LM-1 flew on the Apollo 5 mission of Jan. 22, 1968. NASA's Orion spacecraft is now being built in the same facility, now known as the Operations and Checkout Building. Photo credit: NASA
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Image above: This is an artist's concept depicting the CST-100 under development by The Boeing Company of Houston for NASA's Commercial Crew Program (CCP). Image credit: The Boeing Company
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Image above: The CCP proposal being developed by Sierra Nevada of Louisville, Colo.is the Dream Chaser spacecraft, shown in this artist's concept. Image credit: Sierra Nevada
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Image above: The Dragon capsule illustrated in this artist's concept, is under development by Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, Calif. Image credit: Space Exploration Technologies
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On Jan. 22, NASA took a crucial next step toward launching astronauts to the International Space Station from the United States. Beginning the first phase of the Commercial Crew Program's (CCP) certification efforts, three companies now are conducting activities that will confirm commercial spacecraft are safe to carry crews to the station.

This landmark comes as the agency celebrates the 45th anniversary of an essential stage in sending Americans to the moon.

Launched Jan. 22, 1968, Apollo 5 was the first unpiloted flight of an Apollo lunar module successfully flown from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, establishing the module's ability to perform as designed. The mission also helped certify that the spacecraft could safely fly with astronauts on its next mission.

Similarly, through May 30, 2014, three companies are working under contract with CCP to develop products to implement the agency's flight safety and performance standards and requirements. The Certification Products Contracts (CPC) will establish standards across all aspects of commercial crew systems, including design of the spacecraft, launch vehicles, and ground and mission operations.

As the first human spaceflight development program based at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, CCP will provide the U.S. its own transportation capabilities to the International Space Station.

"Throughout the phases of this program, we've really been creating a capability for the nation to use for low-Earth orbit transportation," said Ed Mango, CCP manager at Kennedy. "As we create that capability, then NASA will become a customer so that we can move our flight crew to the International Space Station and continue our critical science."

The CPC contractors are The Boeing Company of Houston developing the CST-100 spacecraft that will launch atop a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket; Sierra Nevada Corp. Space System of Louisville, Colo., building the Dream Chaser also set to launch on an Atlas V; and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, Calif., maturing its Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket for crewed missions.

Under the contract's certification plan, resulting data will aid in developing engineering standards, as well as needed tests and analyses of crew transportation system designs. The second phase of certification efforts, expected to begin in mid-2014, will involve a full and open competition. It will include the final development, testing and verification processes necessary to allow piloted demonstration flights to the space station.

NASA is facilitating the development of U.S. commercial crew space transportation capabilities with the goal of achieving safe, reliable and cost-effective access to and from low-Earth orbit for potential government and commercial customers.

Like the goals of CPC, a key objective of Apollo 5 was to ensure the vehicle would fly safely. Mission objectives included verifying that both the lunar module’s ascent and descent engines would ignite as planned and evaluating the strength of the spacecraft’s overall structure.

The engine that would be used to land on the moon was fired several times. Then, the ascent engine was ignited successfully simulating an abort during the landing phase. This involved the ascent propulsion system being started simultaneously with the descent engine being shut down.

At the time, Maj. Gen. Samuel Philips, director of the Apollo Program Office, said that the lunar module's maiden flight completed testing of the last major piece of Apollo flight hardware. All other Apollo hardware elements had been tested throughout the previous two years.

Between late 1968 and the end of 1972, 11 piloted Apollo missions were flown, nine going to the moon, six of which landed on the lunar surface.

Running concurrently with CPC is the agency's CCiCap initiative, short for Commercial Crew Integrated Capability. During CCiCap, SpaceX is planning for a pad abort test and in-flight abort test, SNC will begin its flight test phase, and Boeing, working with its subcontractor ULA, will check the compatibility between their spacecraft and launch vehicle. All of these milestones could be used by NASA in the future to validate the commercial systems are safe for crews, much like the Apollo 5 mission did 45 years ago.

While NASA works with U.S. industry partners to develop commercial crew capabilities to transport American astronauts to the space station in low-Earth orbit, work also is ongoing for NASA's first spacecraft to travel beyond the moon.

"We have a complementary, dual strategy at NASA," said Phil McAlister, director of NASA's Commercial Spaceflight Development at Headquarters in Washington. “We're letting the private sector take a little bit more responsibility for low-Earth orbit and the International Space Station cargo re-supply and crew transportation while NASA retains its more traditional role in the deep space exploration part.”

 

 

Bob Granath,
NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center

Engineers Building Hard-working Mining Robot

Engineers Building Hard-working Mining Robot

For decades, NASA has operated robots full of delicate scientific instruments used to study other worlds. Now, NASA engineers are developing a different kind of robot: a prototype designed to dig into lunar soil, climb over obstacles, and pull water and ice from the dirt for processing into usable resources. This robot must be able to operate in lower gravity, and work all day, every day for years.

Engineers Building Hard-working Mining Robot

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Engineers Building Hard-working Mining Robot

1.25.13

 

Image above: The RASSOR robot climbs a hill during recent testing at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Photo credit: NASA
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Image above: With a pair of drums positioned on arms, the RASSOR can take on a number of different shapes to accomplish its work. Photo credit: NASA
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Image above: The RASSOR can climb over a large obstacle, such as a boulder on the moon. Engineers on Earth used a stepping stool to challenge the robot. Photo credit: NASA
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After decades of designing and operating robots full of scientific gear to study other worlds, NASA is working on a prototype that leaves the delicate instruments at home in exchange for a sturdy pair of diggers and the reliability and strength to work all day, every day for years.

Think of it as a blue collar robot.

Dubbed RASSOR, for Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot and pronounced "razor," the autonomous machine is far from space-ready, but the earliest design has shown engineers the broad strokes of what their lunar soil excavator needs in order to operate reliably.

"We were surprised at what we could do with it," said Rachel Cox, a Kennedy Space Center engineer on the RASSOR team.

The primary challenge for any digging robot operating off Earth is that they have to be light and small enough to fly on a rocket, but heavy enough to operate in gravity lower than that of Earth.

"The lighter you make your robot, the more difficult it is to do this excavating," said A.J. Nick, an engineer on the RASSOR team.

RASSOR tackles this problem by using digging bucket drums at each end of the robot's body that rotate in opposite directions, giving enough traction on one end to let the opposite side dig into the soil.

The team built a weight off-loading harness that simulated working the rover in the moon's 1/6th gravity field.

"We proved that if you engage one bucket, it pulls itself but when you lower the other bucket and rotate it, once they both catch in, it starts digging," Nick said.

Another secret of the drum, inspired by a previous Lockheed Martin design, is the staggered shallow scoops that shave the soil a bit at a time rather than scoop large chunks of it all at once, the way bulldozers do on Earth.

A concept mission for RASSOR would have a 2000 pound payload in addition to the lander, which would be about the size of the Phoenix lander NASA sent to Mars. The RASSOR is expected to weigh about 100 pounds. The remaining payload would be used to process the lunar soil delivered by RASSOR.

The RASSOR looks like a small tank chassis with a drum at either end, each attached with arms. The drums are perhaps the robot's most innovative feature. Because they are mounted on moving arms, they can act almost as legs letting the robot step and climb over obstacles.

The team calls such moves "acrobatics." They point out that the robot can safely drive off the lander and right itself, flip itself over to get unstuck from fine soil and lift the whole body off the ground to let its treads run smoothly to remove built up soil. RASSOR is designed to easily make itself into a Z-shaped position to drop its soil collection into the hopper.

With the drums positioned above the main body of the robot, it stands about 2 1/2 feet tall.

The robot is designed to skim lunar soil and dump it into a device that would pull water and ice out of the dirt and turn their chemicals into rocket fuel or breathing air for astronauts working on the surface. The device would be part of the lander that carries the RASSOR to the moon's surface. So the robot would be the feeder for a lunar resource processing plant, a level of industry never before tried anywhere besides Earth.

Producing water and fuel from the lunar soil would save the tremendous expense of launching the supplies from Earth, since 90 percent of a rocket’s mass normally consists of propellant, which can be made on the moon.

"This has been kind of the dream, the mission they gear this around," Nick said.

The concept could work on Mars, too, since its soil also is suspected of holding large amounts of water ice.

"There are some areas at the poles where they think there's a lot of ice, so you'd be digging in ice," Nick said. "There's other areas where the water is actually 30 centimeters down so you actually have to dig down 30 centimeters and take off the top and that depth is really where you want to start collecting water ice."

But in order to provide enough material to the production platform to create usable amounts of resources, the RASSOR would need to operate about 16 hours a day for five years. It would drive five times faster than the Mars Curiosity rover's top speed of 4 centimeters per second, then shave the moon's surface with a pair of rotating drums and return to the resource processing plant with some 40 pounds of lunar soil for processing.

"Right now, we just want to make sure nothing in our design precludes it from doing that," said Jason Schuler, one of the engineers on the RASSOR project.

Devising a robot for such demands called for numerous innovations, and the team says it has at least one major decision to make before it begins construction of the second generation RASSOR prototype: keep going with tracks like those that tanks use, or switch to wheels.

The tracks showed some flaws in recent testing, mostly relating to the pebbles and sand particles clogging the gears and making the track slip off. The group tried out RASSOR on several surfaces at Kennedy, including the crushed river rock dug up from the crawlerway. The rock, even though pulverized by the gigantic crawlers, is not a great substitute for lunar soil, the engineers said, but as long as the robot handles that matter well, they say they know it will manage whatever the moon soil offers.

"The mobility was definitely a challenge," Schuler said. "You can't take for granted that it's going to work like it does on grass or concrete or even on sand."

Part of the problem, the engineers said, might be the rubber material the tracks are made of, but a lunar version of the robot would use a different material, possibly metallic. For example, the lunar rover the astronauts drove on the surface used wheels made of stainless steel springs rather than rubber.

"We are studying if we want to invest the time and make a more robust track system or if we want to go to wheels," Cox said.

A 25-foot-square area has been cleared in part of the engineers' workshop to make room for a large area of imitation lunar soil that will allow the robot to be tested in material close to what it will face on the moon.

The team already is designing RASSOR 2, a prototype that would be much closer to what NASA could launch in the future. It's expected to begin testing in early 2014.

 

 

Steven Siceloff,
Kennedy Space Center

NASA's Robotic Refueling Demo Set to Jumpstart Expanded Capabilities in Space

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NASA's Robotic Refueling Demo Set to Jumpstart Expanded Capabilities in Space

01.10.13

 

This artist's concept shows a scene from the upcoming refueling demo aboard the International Space Station. The Robotic Refueling Mission, or RRM, Multifunction Tool (right) removes a cap from the RRM module (left). (NASA)
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The Robotic Refueling Mission, or RRM, investigation (center, on platform) uses the International Space Station’s Canadarm2 and the Canadian Dextre robot (right) to demonstrate satellite-servicing tasks. (NASA)
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On July 12, 2011, spacewalking astronauts Mike Fossum and Ron Garan successfully transferred the Robotic Refueling Mission, or RRM, module from the Atlantis shuttle cargo bay to a temporary platform on the International Space Station’s Dextre robot. (NASA)
View large imageIn mid-January, NASA will take the next step in advancing robotic satellite-servicing technologies as it tests the Robotic Refueling Mission, or RRM aboard the International Space Station. The investigation may one day substantially impact the many satellites that deliver products Americans rely upon daily, such as weather reports, cell phones and television news.

During five days of operations, controllers from NASA and the Canadian Space Agency will use the space station's remotely operated Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator, or Dextre, robot to simulate robotic refueling in space. Operating a space-based robotic arm from the ground is a feat on its own, but NASA will do more than just robotics work as controllers remotely snip wires, unscrew caps and transfer simulated fuel. The team also will demonstrate tools, technologies and techniques that could one day make satellites in space greener, more robust and more capable of delivering essential services to people on Earth.

Why Fix or Refuel a Satellite?
"Every satellite has a lifespan and eventual retirement date, determined by the reliability of its components and how much fuel it can carry," explains Benjamin Reed, deputy project manager of NASA's Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office, or SSCO.

Repairing and refueling satellites already in place, Reed asserts, can be far less expensive than building and launching entirely new spacecraft, potentially saving millions, even billions of dollars and many years of work.

The RRM demonstration specifically tests what it would take to repair and refuel satellites traveling the busy space highway of geosynchronous Earth orbit, or GEO. Located about 22,000 miles above Earth, this orbital path is home to more than 400 satellites, many of which beam communications, television and weather data to customers worldwide.

By developing robotic capabilities to repair and refuel GEO satellites, NASA hopes to add precious years of functional life to satellites and expand options for operators who face unexpected emergencies, tougher economic demands and aging fleets. NASA also hopes that these new technologies will help boost the commercial satellite-servicing industry that is rapidly gaining momentum.

Besides aiding the GEO satellite community, a capability to fix and relocate "ailing" satellites also could help manage the growing orbital debris problem that threatens continued space operations, ultimately making space greener and more sustainable.

How RRM Is Making a Difference 
Built by SSCO in the span of 18 months, the washing-machine-sized RRM module contains the components, activity boards and tools to practice several of the tasks that would be performed in orbit during a real servicing mission. Launched to the space station on July 8, 2011, aboard the final mission of the Space Shuttle Program, RRM was the last payload an astronaut ever removed from a shuttle.

In 2012, RRM demonstrated dexterous robotic operations in space. Dextre's 12-foot arm and accompanying RRM tool successfully snipped two twisted wires -- each the thickness of two sheets of paper -- with only a few millimeters of clearance: a task essential to the satellite refueling process.



The RRM refueling demonstration on Jan. 14-24 will employ the Canadian-built Dextre, NASA's RRM module and four unique RRM tools to show that space robots controlled from Earth -- hundreds or even thousands of miles below -- can transfer fuel to satellites with triple-sealed valves that were never designed to be accessed.

"The RRM operations team is very excited about the upcoming refueling demonstration," says Charlie Bacon, RRM operations manager. "Over the last two years, the team has put in more than 300 hours of preparation -- reviewing procedures, running simulations, and communicating with team members from other NASA centers and our international partners. When we finally execute the namesake task of RRM, we anticipate that our work will culminate in proving that in-orbit satellite refueling is no longer future technology -- it's current technology."

Although the RRM module will never fix or refuel a satellite itself, its advanced tools and practice runs are laying the foundation for future in-orbit robotic servicing missions. Additional RRM demonstrations will continue into 2013, with a new round of servicing task boards, tools and activities slated to continue its investigations through 2015.

What's Next in Robotic Satellite Servicing?
The satellite-servicing concept that RRM is advancing is one that NASA has been developing for years. Beginning with the Solar Maximum repair mission in 1984, the servicing philosophy paved the way for five successful astronaut-based missions to upgrade and repair the Hubble Space Telescope and has been practiced more recently in spacewalks to assemble and maintain the space station.

With the RRM on the space station and a robust technology development campaign being conducted on the ground, NASA is testing capabilities for a new robotic servicing frontier. Since 2009, the Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., has been aggressively advancing the robotic technologies for a free-flying servicer spacecraft that could access, repair and refuel satellites in GEO.

To this end, the SSCO team has been studying a conceptual servicing mission and building technologies to address uncharted territory such as autonomous rendezvous and docking, propellant transfer systems for zero gravity andspecialized algorithms (computer commands) to orchestrate and synchronize satellite-servicing operations. A systems engineering review on this conceptual mission was recently conducted with positive responses from peer experts and external participants.

Reed and the SSCO team see many applications across NASA for these new, game-changing capabilities.

"The technologies we're building to help rescue satellites in five years could be the very same ones used to clean up space ten years in the future or save a spacecraft on the way to Mars 30 years from now," says Reed. "NASA is acting today to ensure that we have the capabilities America needs for the future. With satellite servicing technologies, we're bolstering the agency's long-term strategy as we invest in near-term tactical technology investments. RRM is just the beginning."

 

 

by Adrienne Alessandro
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center