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At least 253 records · Page 14

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NASA NTRS2019

Urine Removal from Suited Crew in Orion Vehicle Depressurization Scenario

Humankind wants to continually venture deeper into space, but there are many hazards of deep space exploration. NASA’s Orion Program seeks to incrementally identify these hazards and begin addressing the difficulties of such long-duration missions. One of the largest risks and areas of program focus is crew survival in a vehicle cabin depressurization scenario. As part of proactive mitigation efforts, contingency operations and associated hardware are being developed to sustain crew members for up to 6 days. While the Orion launch and entry suit would provide the crew a pressurized safe haven for that duration, additional systems are needed to handle crew waste while within the suit. NASA’s Orion Crew Survival Systems (OCSS) and Collins Aerospace are working together to develop and test an external suit system to aid in the evacuation of urine from pressurized suits to ensure crew health and safety. This paper describes the recent and on-going design and testing that is driving evolution of hardware and requirements towards eventual flight certification.

OCSS↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Orion Power Transfer: Impacts of a Battery-on-Bus Power System Architecture

The Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) has the capability to transfer power to a co-manifested payload (CPL) during transit from low-Earth orbit to the lunar vicinity. This paper discusses a time-phased parametric power analysis to determine the Orion power transfer capability limit. Charge and discharge curves were generated for various power transfer conditions and measured against various minimum system voltage limits. The Orion electrical power system (EPS) utilizes an unregulated bus architecture, which has important implications when the system is operating under very high load demand conditions, such as during power transfer. This analysis highlights three important effects of this architecture. First, increasing load demand decreases the maximum state of charge (SOC) the batteries can reach when charging. Second, increasing load demand also decreases the allowable battery depth of discharge. These two together can significantly reduce the effective useable capacity of the batteries. Finally, low battery voltage decreases the power generation of the solar arrays. This can lead to significantly longer recharge times or even push the system out of energy balance. These effects have important implications for mission design and vehicle operations and must be accounted for when conducting sizing and design of an unregulated spacecraft EPS.

Electrical Power System↗

NASA NTRS2024

Overview of Integrated Random Vibration Testing of the NASA Orion Crew Survival Suit

The launch ascent and abort random vibration environments from NASA’s Orion spacecraft drove the need to test the NASA Orion Crew Survival Suit as an integrated system with exposure to the design levels. In order to properly characterize component responses, a series of integrated tests were designed to incorporate the interaction between a crew member, suit, seat, and the attenuation system. The first Development Test (2017) included human subjects, and was performed with early development seat and suit components, and low level inputs. It provided a baseline for frequency response and behavior of the integrated system. The next two tests, Development Test (2019) and Qualification Test (2020), used manikin surrogates to represent the crew member and increasing levels of component hardware fidelity in order to test to higher input levels. Testing was performed at NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) and Kennedy Space Center (KSC) Vibration Labs and provided the input levels required to represent the ascent and abort vehicle profiles as well as recorded component response behavior from accelerometer instrumentation and high speed cameras. Inspection of the suit and related components showed that for all seat orientations, and input environments, no damage occurred. Additional pre and post-test checks confirmed the functionality of all suited hardware. Response data of the suited components generally showed heavy attenuation across most of the tested frequency range. Transmissibility plots showed some amplification of components at lower frequency ranges. Overall this series of integrated tests showed that 1) the use of surrogate manikins in the tests were adequate for representing crew in a vibration environment, 2) full vibration levels for ascent and abort were heavily attenuated in the suit components and were non-damaging, and 3) the suit and related components are qualified for the Orion random vibration environments.

Jeffrey D Suhey↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Overview of Integrated Random Vibration Testing of the NASA Orion Crew Survival Suit

Jeffrey Suhey↗

DOE OSTI2016

Impact of Using Cross Sections Versus Recipes in Transition Fuel Cycle Analysis using ORION

ORION, a nuclear fuel cycle simulator developed at the UK National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL), is designed to simulate the operations of general nuclear fuel cycles, including once-through, limited recycle, and continuous recycle fuel cycle options. ORION can simulate the full range of nuclear-related facilities e.g. interim and long-term storage locations, fabrication and enrichment plants, reprocessing facilities, and reactors. It can track over 2,500 nuclides and can model decay and in-reactor irradiation. Based on ORION's ability to track the full isotopic mass flow between fuel cycle facilities (with or without decay), it is possible to model all of the necessary nuclide production and destruction routes. This is essential when calculating accurate spent nuclear fuel (SNF) compositions and associated metrics (e.g., decay heat and radioactivity). When modeling the transition from the current once through US fuel cycle to an alternative fuel cycle, it is important to accurately model the US pressurized water reactor (PWR) discharged SNF composition while minimizing the computational time. This paper discusses two rapid methods used to model the US PWR discharged SNF-fixed recipes versus cross sections-and it discusses the differences between the results from these two methods in relation to fuel cycle transition analysis. (authors)

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

DOE OSTI2021

Recent enhancements in the performance of the Orion high-resolution x-ray spectrometers

During the past few years, the Orion high-resolution x-ray spectrometers have been successful tools for measuring x-ray spectra from plasmas generated in the Orion laser facility. Duplicate spectrometers also operate successfully at the Livermore EBIT-I and SuperEBIT electron beam ion traps for measuring x-ray polarization. We have recently implemented very high-quality, optically bonded, spherically bent quartz crystals to remove the structure in the x-ray image that had been observed in earlier measurements. The structure had been caused by focusing defects and limited the accuracy of our measurements. In this work, we present before and after images that show a drastic improvement. We, furthermore, have implemented a spherically bent potassium acid phthalate (KAP) crystal on one of our spectrometers. The KAP crystal was prepared in a similar fashion, and we present measurements of the N Ly-β and Ne Lyβ lines taken in first- and second-order reflections at 600 and 1200 eV, respectively. These measurements confirm that KAP crystals can be produced at a quality suitable for extending the spectral coverage to wavelengths longer than those accessible by different quartz crystals, especially those that cover the astrophysically important lines of iron.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

NASA NTRS2008

A Terminal Descent Sensor Trade Study Overview for the Orion Landing and Recovery System

This trade study was conducted as a part of the Orion Landing System Advanced Development Project to determine possible Terminal Descent Sensor (TDS) architectures that could be used for a rocket assisted landing system. Several technologies were considered for the Orion TDS including radar, lidar, GPS applications, mechanical sensors, and gamma ray altimetry.

lidar↗

NASA NTRS2012

A Lunar L2-Farside Exploration and Science Mission Concept with the ORion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle and a Teleoperated Lander/Rover

A novel concept is presented in this paper for a human mission to the lunar L2 (Lagrange) point that would be a proving ground for future exploration missions to deep space while also overseeing scientifically important investigations. In an L2 halo orbit above the lunar farside, the astronauts would travel 15% farther from Earth than did the Apollo astronauts and spend almost three times longer in deep space. Such missions would validate the Orion MPCV's life support systems, would demonstrate the high-speed re-entry capability needed for return from deep space, and would measure astronauts' radiation dose from cosmic rays and solar flares to verify that Orion would provide sufficient protection, as it is designed to do. On this proposed mission, the astronauts would teleoperate landers and rovers on the unexplored lunar farside, which would obtain samples from the geologically interesting farside and deploy a low radio frequency telescope. Sampling the South Pole-Aitkin basin (one of the oldest impact basins in the solar system) is a key science objective of the 2011 Planetary Science Decadal Survey. Observations of the Universe's first stars/galaxies at low radio frequencies are a priority of the 2010 Astronomy & Astrophysics Decadal Survey. Such telerobotic oversight would also demonstrate capability for human and robotic cooperation on future, more complex deep space missions.

Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV)↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Predicting Orion Launch Abort Acoustics

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) scale-resolving simulations were performed to help assess the Orion launch abort system’s vibro-acoustic environment in collaboration with the Orion Loads and Dynamics team at the Johnson Space Center (JSC). The primary objectives are to establish best practices and to validate CFD predictions for surface fluctuating pressure spectra with ground, wind tunnel, and flight test data. Excellent agreement is obtained between CFD predictions by the Cartesian adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) module of the Launch, Ascent, and Vehicle Aerodynamics (LAVA) solver and measurements from a ground test representative of the start of a pad abort scenario, and with measurements from a wind tunnel test case corresponding to a transonic, high total angle of attack ascent abort scenario. A simplified (static and at rest) simulation of a pad abort flight test shows good agreement with the flight data, whereas a more costly simulation where the vehicle is accelerating relative to the ground from rest to Mach 0.4 shows consistent over-prediction of the spectra. Simulation results for a supersonic ascent abort flight test are in reasonable agreement with the measurements, but show larger excursions in regions where non-linear interactions between the plume turbulence, shocks, and turbulent boundary layer are strongest – likely due to CFD modeling assumptions, the effect of which are discussed. Overall, the CFD results demonstrate that scale-resolving simulation methodologies like the one presented can help characterize full-scale launch abort vehicle near-field noise and can complement wind tunnel, ground and flight tests by providing trends and reducing uncertainty for scenarios that cannot or are not planned to be tested.

Orion↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

A History of Orion Mission Design, Copernicus Software Development, and the Artemis I Trajectory

This paper describes the history of the on-orbit trajectory design and optimization for the Orion spacecraft at NASA JSC, from the initial design through the execution of the Artemis I test flight. In parallel, the Copernicus trajectory optimization tool was also being developed and was the main tool used for Orion trajectory design during this period. Finally, the paper gives an overview of the Artemis I trajectory that was flown during the Artemis I mission from November 16 - December 11, 2022.

Orion↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Tomography Analysis of Orion Artemis 1 Heatshield Sample

The Orion spacecraft, under NASA's Artemis program, is an integral step in humanity's ambitions of deep space exploration, including our return to the Moon and subsequent mission to Mars. The performance of Orion's heatshield is central to ensuring the safety and success of such missions. This presentation offers a comprehensive overview of the process used in and findings derived from tomography scans of an Artemis 1 heatshield sample executed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Advanced Light Source. These tomography scans captured high-resolution X-Ray images of the heatshield's microstructure, allowing advanced imaging to be employed for 3D image segmentation and visualization of the sample. The Porous Media Analysis (PuMA) software stands central to our analysis, offering robust computational algorithms and methodologies to digitally compute properties of the heatshield material. The presentation discusses the following derived metrics: - Volume fractions, representing the spatial distribution and amounts of various components throughout the heatshield’s depth. - Porosity and crack distributions, offering insights into the void space within the material, critical for understanding the heatshield's structural integrity. - Fiber orientation, detailing the alignment and arrangement of fibers, significant for material orthotropy. - Permeability estimates, quantifying the passage of gas through the material, relevant for re-entry conditions and pyrolysis gasses. One distinctive feature of this study is the comparative evaluation against data obtained from tomography scans of the Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) heatshield. Such a comparison offers multiple insights, including evaluation of the consistency and repeatability of manufacturing processes as well as understanding of any evolutionary changes in heatshield design or material properties.

Micro-tomography↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Orion Artemis I Descent and Landing Performance

The Artemis I mission successfully demonstrated the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Module ability to trigger parachute deployment, control angular rate and touch-down heading using reaction control jets while under parachutes, and automatically detect splashdown. Guidance and control logic is implemented to initiate para-chute events in a favorable dynamic state and select a touchdown heading direction that will minimize impact loads at splashdown. Detection of splashdown inhibits control to prevent firing reaction control jets under water and begin the transition into post-landing activities that cut parachutes and deploy the Crew Module Up-righting System (CMUS). This paper presents analysis of Orion descent and landing guidance and control performance for the Artemis I mission utilizing imagery taken from the vehicle, recorded flight data, and results from high fidelity simulations.

Artemis 1↗

DOE OSTI2021

Absolute throughput calibration of multiple spherical crystals for the Orion High-REsolution X-ray spectrometer (OHREX)

We present absolute throughput analysis of several crystals for the Orion High-REsolution X-ray (OHREX) imaging crystal spectrometer using ray tracing and experimental measurements. The OHREX spectrometer is a high-resolution x-ray spectrometer designed to measure spectral line shapes at the Orion laser facility. The spectrometer is fielded with up to two spherical crystals simultaneously covering two independent spectral ranges. Each crystal has a nominal radius of curvature of R = 67.2 cm and is fielded at a nominal Bragg angle of 51.3°. To cover different bands of interest, several different crystals are available, including Ge (111), KAP, and several cuts of quartz, whose resolving power λ/Δλ exceeds 10 000. The calibrated response of the available crystals has previously been reported from measurements at the EBIT-I electron beam ion trap at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Here, we model the absolute throughput of each crystal using ray tracing and verify the results using experimental data for the quartz $(10\bar{1}1)$ crystal.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

DOE OSTI2015

THE NATURE AND FREQUENCY OF OUTFLOWS FROM STARS IN THE CENTRAL ORION NEBULA CLUSTER

Recent Hubble Space Telescope images have allowed the determination with unprecedented accuracy of motions and changes of shocks within the inner Orion Nebula. These originate from collimated outflows from very young stars, some within the ionized portion of the nebula and others within the host molecular cloud. We have doubled the number of Herbig–Haro objects known within the inner Orion Nebula. We find that the best-known Herbig–Haro shocks originate from relatively few stars, with the optically visible X-ray source COUP 666 driving many of them. While some isolated shocks are driven by single collimated outflows, many groups of shocks are the result of a single stellar source having jets oriented in multiple directions at similar times. This explains the feature that shocks aligned in opposite directions in the plane of the sky are usually blueshifted because the redshifted outflows pass into the optically thick photon-dominated region behind the nebula. There are two regions from which optical outflows originate for which there are no candidate sources in the SIMBAD database.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2014

Core-halo age gradients and star formation in the Orion Nebula and NGS 2024 young stellar clusters

We analyze age distributions of two nearby rich stellar clusters, the NGC 2024 (Flame Nebula) and Orion Nebula cluster (ONC) in the Orion molecular cloud complex. Our analysis is based on samples from the MYStIX survey and a new estimator of pre-main sequence (PMS) stellar ages, Age{sub JX} , derived from X-ray and near-infrared photometric data. To overcome the problem of uncertain individual ages and large spreads of age distributions for entire clusters, we compute median ages and their confidence intervals of stellar samples within annular subregions of the clusters. We find core-halo age gradients in both the NGC 2024 cluster and ONC: PMS stars in cluster cores appear younger and thus were formed later than PMS stars in cluster peripheries. These findings are further supported by the spatial gradients in the disk fraction and K-band excess frequency. Our age analysis is based on Age{sub JX} estimates for PMS stars and is independent of any consideration of OB stars. The result has important implications for the formation of young stellar clusters. One basic implication is that clusters form slowly and the apparent age spreads in young stellar clusters, which are often controversial, are (at least in part) real. The result further implies that simple models where clusters form inside-out are incorrect and more complex models are needed. We provide several star formation scenarios that alone or in combination may lead to the observed core-halo age gradients.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2014

Herschel observations of extraordinary sources: Analysis of the HIFI 1.2 THz wide spectral survey toward orion KL. I. method

We present a comprehensive analysis of a broadband spectral line survey of the Orion Kleinmann-Low nebula (Orion KL), one of the most chemically rich regions in the Galaxy, using the HIFI instrument on board the Herschel Space Observatory. This survey spans a frequency range from 480 to 1907 GHz at a resolution of 1.1 MHz. These observations thus encompass the largest spectral coverage ever obtained toward this high-mass star-forming region in the submillimeter with high spectral resolution and include frequencies >1 THz, where the Earth's atmosphere prevents observations from the ground. In all, we detect emission from 39 molecules (79 isotopologues). Combining this data set with ground-based millimeter spectroscopy obtained with the IRAM 30 m telescope, we model the molecular emission from the millimeter to the far-IR using the XCLASS program, which assumes local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE). Several molecules are also modeled with the MADEX non-LTE code. Because of the wide frequency coverage, our models are constrained by transitions over an unprecedented range in excitation energy. A reduced χ{sup 2} analysis indicates that models for most species reproduce the observed emission well. In particular, most complex organics are well fit by LTE implying gas densities are high (>10{sup 6} cm{sup –3}) and excitation temperatures and column densities are well constrained. Molecular abundances are computed using H{sub 2} column densities also derived from the HIFI survey. The distribution of rotation temperatures, T {sub rot}, for molecules detected toward the hot core is significantly wider than the compact ridge, plateau, and extended ridge T {sub rot} distributions, indicating the hot core has the most complex thermal structure.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2014

Massive quiescent cores in Orion. V. The internal structures and physical and chemical properties of two extremely dense cores

We present a high-resolution (∼ 1.''5) observational study of two massive dust-gas cores, ORI8nw{sub 2} and ORI2{sub 6}, in the Orion molecular cloud using the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy. In each region the 3.2 mm continuum emission exhibits a dense and compact dust core at the center with 1-3 solar masses. The cores have number densities exceeding 10{sup 9} cm{sup –3}, which are among the highest volume densities observed in star-forming cores. In both regions the N{sub 2}H{sup +} shows clumpy structures that are spatially displaced from the densest gas. In OIR8nw{sub 2} in particular, the N{sub 2}H{sup +} shows a noticeable filament structure with a central cavity shell. The calculation for the dynamical state shows that this core can be potentially supported by the magnetic field against its gravitational instability, but the fragmentation might still occur and produce the observed N{sub 2}H{sup +} clumps if the gas density exceeds 5 × 10{sup 7} cm{sup –3} and this value is available within the observed density range. Also, the extremely high density at the core center suggests super-Jeans condition and the possibility for further fragmentation. For the chemical properties, the N{sub 2}H{sup +}-to-HCO{sup +} abundance ratios are shown to be different than those observed in infrared dark clouds. A combined analysis with the other Orion cores and the chemical model suggests that the different abundance ratios can be explained by the low CO abundances in our cores. To further reveal the evolution of such dense cores, higher resolution and sensitivity are required.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2014

A study of dynamical processes in the Orion KL region using ALMA—probing molecular outflow and inflow

This work reports high spatial resolution observations toward the Orion KL region with high critical density lines of CH{sub 3}CN (12{sub 4}-11{sub 4}) and CH{sub 3}OH (8{sub –1,8}-7{sub 0,7}), as well as a continuum at ∼1.3 mm band. The observations were made using the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array with a spatial resolution of ∼1.''5 and sensitivity of about 0.07 K and ∼0.18 K for continuum and line, respectively. The observational results showed that the gas in the Orion KL region consists of jet-propelled cores at the ridge and dense cores east and south of the region that are shaped like a wedge ring. The outflow has multiple lobes, which may originate from an explosive ejection, and is not driven by young stellar objects. Four infrared bubbles were found in the Spitzer/IRAC emissions. These bubbles, the distributions of the previously found H{sub 2} jets, the young stellar objects, and molecular gas suggest that BN is the explosive center. The burst time was estimated to be ≤1300 yr. At the same time, signatures of gravitational collapse toward Source I and the hot core were detected with material infall velocities of 1.5 km s{sup –1} and ∼0.6 km s{sup –1}, corresponding to mass accretion rates of 1.2 × 10{sup –3} M {sub ☉}/yr and 8.0 × 10{sup –5} M {sub ☉}/yr, respectively. These observations may support the belief that high-mass stars form via the accretion model, similar to their low-mass counterparts.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗