Seventh X-38 Flight Proves New Technologies for Space Rescues
An advanced X-38 prototype International Space Station “lifeboat”
floated to a successful touchdown at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time
today under the world’s largest parafoil at NASA’s Dryden Flight
Research Center at Edwards, Calif. This is the sixth free flight test
for the X-38 project, ultimately intended to produce a vehicle
capable of evacuating a seven-person crew from the station in an
emergency.
The landing test, begun at an altitude of about 37,500 feet when the
X-38 was released at 10:47 a.m. from NASA’s B-52 aircraft, verified
recent enhancements made to the X-38’s flight control software. The
flight also checked advances in the two-stage repositioning
deployment of a drogue parachute that initially slows the vehicle
from 600 miles an hour to about 60 miles an hour and sets the stage
for deployment of the 7,500-square-foot-parafoil wing. The surface
area of the parafoil is more than one and a half times that of the
wings of a 747 jumbo jet.
Program engineers continued testing European Space Agency-developed
software that guides the parafoil, steering the X-38 to a safe
landing. After a 13-minute gliding descent, the uncrewed X-38 touched
down at a speed of less than 40 miles an hour on the clay surface of
Rogers Dry Lake on Edwards Air Force Base in California’s Mojave
Desert. Several parafoil maneuvers were performed using the
European-developed X-38 software.
“Each flight test of the X-38 incorporates technologies that have
never before been used on a human spacecraft — from satellite-based
navigation to electromechanical actuators to the giant parafoil,”
said X-38 Crew Return Vehicle Program Manager John Muratore. “Every
flight gives us invaluable insight into the performance of these
technologies during an actual descent and brings us closer to proving
them for use in space.”
The test was the second X-38 mission using the giant parafoil. The
test also was the second flight of an X-38 shape that includes a
semicircular cross section aft end, identical to the shape of an X-38
space vehicle planned for a test flight from a Space Shuttle in 2003
and now under construction.
The European-influenced semicircular aft end could allow the X-38 to
be compatible with launch on a European Ariane V rocket as well as
aboard the Space Shuttle.
The X-38 project is developing technologies that could be used to
operate a prototype “lifeboat” for the International Space Station.
The project combines proven technologies — a shape borrowed from a
1970s Air Force project — with some of the most cutting-edge
aerospace technology available today.
Although the United States has led the development of the X-38,
international space agencies also are participating. Contributing
countries include Germany, Belgium, Italy, The Netherlands, France,
Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas, leads the X-38 program
and is building the space-rated test vehicles. The X-38 atmospheric
test vehicles were built by Scaled Composites, Mojave, Calif. NASA’s
Dryden Flight Research Center flight tests the evolving X-38s.
