Orion Escape System Set For Test

An escape system that would save astronauts flying aboard next-generation Orion spacecraft will be put through its first full-scale test in Utah today as NASA presses ahead with the development of the Ares 1 rocket.

The primary motor on the Orion Launch Abort System is 17 feet long and will generate a half-million pounds of thrust during a five-second burn.

Fitted into a specially designed test stand with its nozzles pointed skyward, the motor is expected to blast flames as high as 60 feet -- more than three times the length of the motor itself -- during the test-firing in Promontory, Utah.

The Launch Abort System is being designed to pull Apollo-style Orion crew capsules off the top of Ares 1 rockets in the event of an emergency. It is similar to the system that pulled Russian cosmonauts Vladamir Titov and Gennady Strekalov off the top of a rocket that caught fire on its Baikonur Cosmodrome launch pad back in 1983.

"It was the only time a Launch Abort System has been used in anger, and it worked. It saved those guys," said ATK space systems vice president Charlie Precourt, a former NASA astronaut who flew with Strekalov on the first shuttle mission to the Russian Mir space station in 1995.

Check out a video of the abort here:

The Soyuz abort system propelled Strekalov and Titov from the top of the burning rocket to a safe touchdown about a mile-and-a-half from the launch pad.

The NASA test today will be the first of its kind since the launch abort system for Apollo crew capsules were developed in the 1960s.

Here's an ATK PowerPoint that covers its history with Launch Abort Systems dating back to the earliest days of U.S. spaceflight: ATK LAS History.

Here is a fact sheet that outlines the full test program: Constellation Tests

Here is a fact sheet that provides more details on follow-on tests that will be done at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico: White Sands Tests

ABOUT THE IMAGE: Click to enlarge and save the ATK photo of engineers checking out the 17-foot-tall motor prior to today's test-firing.