May 20 2009
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(New page: NASA announced that, together with industry engineers, it had successfully tested the three main parachutes of the Ares-I rocket, which NASA was designing to serve as the booster rocke...)
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NASA announced that, together with industry engineers, it had successfully tested the three main parachutes of the Ares-I rocket, which NASA was designing to serve as the booster rocket for the Orion CEV. Engineers had designed the parachutes as the primary element of the rocket’s deceleration system, which included a pilot parachute and a drogue parachute. The main parachutes would deploy in a cluster, open simultaneously, and provide the necessary drag to slow the descent of the solid-rocket first-stage motor to a soft landing in the ocean, allowing their recovery for use on future flights. NASA’s MSFC engineers had conducted the first cluster test at the U.S. Army’s Yuma Proving Ground near Yuma, Arizona. The flight test was the eighth in an ongoing series supporting the development of the Ares-I recovery system. The research team had dropped the 41,500-pound (18,824-kilogram, or 18.8-tonne) load from a U.S. Air Force C- 17 aircraft flying at an altitude of 10,000 feet (3,058-meters). All parachutes and test hardware had functioned properly and landed safely. The parachutes measured 150 feet (45.72 meters) in diameter and weighed 2,000 pounds (907 kilograms, or 0.9 tonnes), making them the largest rocket parachutes manufactured to date.
NASA, “NASA Tests Largest Rocket Parachutes Ever for Ares I,” news release 09-113, 20 May 2009, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2009/may/HQ_09-113_AresI_Parachutes_Test.html (accessed 20 June 2011); James Gilbert Keller, “NASA Conducts Successful Test of Largest Ever Parachutes at YPG,” Yuma Daily Sun (Yuma, AZ), 21 May 2009.
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