Dec 20 2012
From The Space Library
RELEASE: 12-441 NASA PUTS ORION BACKUP PARACHUTES TO THE TEST
HOUSTON -- NASA completed the latest in a series of parachute tests for its Orion spacecraft Thursday at the U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground in southwestern Arizona, marking another step toward a first flight test in 2014. The test verified Orion can land safely even if one of its two drogue parachutes does not open during descent. Orion will take humans farther into space than ever before, but one of the most challenging things the multipurpose vehicle will do is bring its crew home safely. Because it will return from greater distances, Orion will reenter the Earth's atmosphere at speeds of more than 20,000 mph. After re-entry, the parachutes are all that will lower the capsule carrying astronauts back to Earth. "The mockup vehicle landed safely in the desert and everything went as planned," said Chris Johnson, a NASA project manager for Orion's parachute assembly system. "We designed the parachute system so nothing will go wrong, but plan and test as though something will so we can make sure Orion is the safest vehicle ever to take humans to space." Orion uses five parachutes. Three are main parachutes measuring 116 feet wide and two are drogue parachutes measuring 23 feet wide. The 21,000-pound capsule needs only two main parachutes and one drogue. The extra two provide a backup in case one of the primary parachutes fails. To verify Orion could land safely with only one drogue parachute, engineers dropped a spacecraft mockup from a plane 25,000 feet above the Arizona desert and simulated a failure of one of the drogues. About 30 seconds into the mockup's fall, the second drogue parachute opened and slowed the mockup down enough for the three main parachutes to take over the descent. The next Orion parachute test is scheduled for February and will simulate a failure of one of the three main parachutes. In 2014, an uncrewed Orion spacecraft will launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Exploration Flight Test-1. The spacecraft will travel 3,600 miles above Earth's surface. This is 15 times farther than the International Space Station's orbit and farther than any spacecraft designed to carry humans has gone in more than 40 years. The main flight objective is to test Orion's heat shield performance at speeds generated during a return from deep space.
CONTRACT RELEASE: C12-063 NASA AWARDS FLIGHT PROJECTS BUILDING CONSTRUCTION CONTRACT
GREENBELT, Md. -- NASA has selected SEMI USA Corporation of Houston to construct the Flight Projects Building at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. This firm-fixed-price contract is valued at approximately $31 million, with options for about $1 million worth of additional work. The period of performance for all work is 18 months from issuance of the Notice to Proceed on or about January 31, 2013. The Flight Projects Building will contain 120,000 square feet of office space distributed on four floors. The steel-frame, clear-span structure will have glass and terracotta rain-screen panel walls with sun-shading elements. The building also will have interior demountable and fixed walls. Associated work includes spread-mat foundation, new and upgraded roadways, parking, traffic signals, perimeter site access fencing, site lighting, new and upgraded utilities, erosion and sediment control, storm water management, and landscaping. This new construction is designed to achieve a minimum of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) 2009 V3 silver certification.
CONTRACT RELEASE: C12-064 NASA SELECTS INTERNET SERVICES AGREEMENT
WASHINGTON -- NASA has selected InfoZen Inc. of Rockville, Md., for the Web Enterprise Service Technologies prime blanket purchase agreement to support agency websites. Orders against this blanket purchase agreement (BPA) will be issued on a firm-fixed-price basis. NASA estimates the volume of purchases through this BPA will be $40 million. The base period of performance will be one year with four one-year options. This procurement will enable an agency-wide capability to create, maintain, and manage websites. The contract will provide a cloud-based solution for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) for internal and external websites and web applications. Those services include content management, and search and collaborative services, such as blogs and wikis.
