Artemis II Recovery Practice Is Underway
With NASA’s second mission to the Moon approaching fast, there still is a long checklist of activities that need to be completed. This not only includes work related to the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft but also work here on Earth. An immensely important mission aspect that people often overlook is the recovery operation once Orion and its crew of 4 splashes down.
Here the agency along with military personnel work to locate and determine the exact landing site of the spacecraft. Once located it’s important that they get to the craft within a short period of time and secure the crew members aboard. Just days ago NASA completed a full Orion recovery operation test out in the Pacific Ocean.
This comes in addition to the crew completing various recovery training and becoming familiar with the plan and vessels. Here I will go more in-depth into this complex process, how NASA gets to and secures the craft in a short period of time, what the recent training looked like, and more.
Mock Recovery Test
NASA takes recovery operations very seriously for a few different reasons. While safety has come a long way with spacecraft reentry and splashdown, it’s still extremely important to make contact with the crew and get them out efficiently. Yesterday NASA tweeted saying, “Teams from @NASA & the @DeptofDefense completed the latest recovery tests for the crewed #Artemis II mission off the coast of San Diego. The recovery teams are modifying timelines and procedures after the successful recovery of@NASA_Orion after Artemis I”. They included an image of the mock recovery which helps put in perspective the scale of this operation.
During the test, the team practiced how they will extract the four astronauts from their spacecraft after they land in the Pacific Ocean, and recover the Orion crew module. The agency commented that “Drawing on lessons learned from the successful recovery of the Orion spacecraft after the Artemis I flight test and the addition of crew for Artemis II, recovery teams are modifying their timelines and procedures to ensure the astronauts will be safely delivered to the recovery ship less than two hours after splashing down.
For the test, NASA’s landing and recovery team used a new crew module test article and personnel from the team as stands-ins for the four astronauts who will fly on the mission to demonstrate their procedures. “Ensuring the safety of the Artemis II crew, not only around the Moon, but once they return to Earth, is our primary focus, said NASA’s landing and recovery director..”With the exceptional efforts of the NASA team and Department of Defense, we will once again bring our astronauts safely home from the Moon.”
On Artemis II, once the crew splashes down at the end of their mission, a group of Navy divers will approach Orion and ensure it is safe for the astronauts to exit the spacecraft. The divers will then open the spacecraft hatch and help the astronauts exit one by one onto an inflatable raft called the “front porch.” This raft wraps around the capsule and gives the crew a platform where they will be picked up via helicopters and flown to the recovery ship several thousand yards away. Once the astronauts are aboard the ship, teams will secure Orion with a series of lines and slowly tow it back inside the ship, just as they did during Artemis I.
Prior to the recent test, the Artemis II crew, visited Naval Base San Diego to meet with the recovery team and learn more about the recovery vessel and testing that will help bring them safely back to shore. Specifically, the crew met with recovery team members from NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems Program and the Department of Defense to learn more about the recovery process for their mission.
While this test, Underway Recovery Test 10, was the first time NASA and its Navy and Air Force partners put their Artemis II recovery operations to the test, it is tenth in a series of demonstrations at sea off the coast of California. NASA finished by saying, “The recovery team will capture lessons learned and apply them to future underway tests to make sure they are ready to recover the Artemis II crew and bring them home safely.”
Recovery Operations
Due to the fact that this mission has four crew members while Artemis 1 had none, there are a few big changes to the recovery plan. As partially mentioned prior, one of the first changes is the inflatable called the front porch. After this has been inflated and attached to the spacecraft, a crew egress stand will be prepositioned to access and recover the crew after the spacecraft is fully recovered into the well deck. At the direction of the NASA Recovery Director, Navy divers and other team members in several inflatable boats will be cleared to approach Orion’s location.
When Orion is ready to be pulled into the well deck, the divers will attach a cable to pull the spacecraft into the ship, called the winch line, and up to four additional tending lines to attach points on the spacecraft. The winch will pull Orion into a specially designed cradle inside the ship’s well deck and the other lines will control the lateral motion of the spacecraft. Once Orion is positioned above the cradle assembly, the well deck will be drained and Orion will be secured on the cradle. Open water personnel will work to recover Orion’s forward bay cover and three main parachutes to the port side of the Navy ship, where a crane will lift them onto the ship’s main deck. If teams are able to recover the jettisoned cover and parachutes, engineers can inspect the hardware and gather additional performance data. If recovered, the parachutes will be transported to a facility for drying, and then to the supplier for inspection.
The spacecraft and other hardware will be transported on the ship from the landing site to a pier at U.S. Naval Base San Diego. After Orion and the other associated hardware are secured in the Recovery Transportation Fixture, a platform nicknamed the Armadillo, they will be transported by truck to Kennedy.
By now, recovery personnel have practiced procedures and operations in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory pool near Johnson Space Center and in the open water off the coast of California during a series of Underway Recovery Tests, using a test version of the Orion spacecraft and other equipment that will be used during recovery operations. These tests help to evaluate and improve recovery procedures and hardware ahead of Orion’s flight on Artemis II.
During the Artemis 1 mission, upon Orion’s successful splashdown in the Pacific Ocean west of Baja California on Dec. 11, flight controllers in mission control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston spent about two hours performing tests in open water to gather additional data about the spacecraft, including on its thermal properties after enduring the searing heat of re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere. Recovery personnel also spent time collecting detailed imagery of the spacecraft before beginning to pull the capsule into the USS Portland’s well deck.
After it was secured and brought back to land, NASA did further inspections on practically every system including the heat shield. The heat shield was removed from the spacecraft and taken to another facility for further detailed inspections. Teams also inspected the windows of the capsule along with the thermal protection on the back shell panels that cover the spacecraft to protect it from the harsh conditions both in space and during the high-speed, high-heat reentry.
On top of the capsule was the deflated crew module uprighting system, which is a group of five air bags that position the capsule right side up after splashdown and were deflated prior to transport back to Kennedy. Engineers also worked to remove external avionics boxes. Technicians eventually took air samples within the capsule beofre repositioning it into a service stand that allowed access to the interior. Upon opening the hatch, technicians removed the internal avionics boxes and payloads. These same avionics boxes will be reused for the Artemis II mission.
Toward the end of the Artemis II mission, after completing checkout procedures, Orion will perform the next propulsion move, called the translunar injection (TLI) burn. With the ICPS having done most of the work to put Orion into a high-Earth orbit, the service module will provide the last push needed to put Orion on a path toward the Moon. The TLI burn will send crew on an outbound trip of about four days and around the backside of the moon where they will ultimately create a figure eight extending over 230,000 miles from Earth before Orion returns home. With a return trip of about four days, the mission is expected to last just over 10 days. Instead of requiring propulsion on the return, this fuel-efficient trajectory harnesses the Earth-Moon gravity field, ensuring that—after its trip around the far side of the Moon—Orion will be pulled back naturally by Earth’s gravity for the free return portion of the mission. This will lead up to Earth reentry and eventually splashdown.
Conclusion
NASA just finished a bunch of testing surrounding Orion’s future recovery after its mission around the Moon. With four crew members aboard the agency knows it needs to quickly reach the capsule and ensure everyone aboard is safe after the splashdown. We will have to wait and see how it progresses and the impact it has on the space industry.