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Lots of Parachute Testing Going On

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
January 17, 2014
Filed under , , ,

NASA Conducts Orion Parachute Test
“Engineers testing the parachute system for NASA’s Orion spacecraft increased the complexity of their tests Thursday, Jan. 16, adding the jettison of hardware designed to keep the capsule safe during flight. The test was the first to give engineers in-air data on the performance of the system that jettisons Orion’s forward bay cover. The cover is a shell that fits over Orion’s crew module to protect the spacecraft during launch, orbital flight and re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. When Orion returns from space, the cover must come off before the spacecraft’s parachutes can deploy. It must be jettisoned high above the ground in order for the parachutes to unfurl.”
SpaceX Tests Dragon Parachute System
“Engineers and safety specialists from NASA and Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) gathered in Morro Bay, Calif., in late December to demonstrate how the company’s Dragon spacecraft’s parachute system would function in the event of an emergency on the launch pad or during ascent. The test was part of an optional milestone under NASA’s Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) initiative and approved by the agency in August.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

34 responses to “Lots of Parachute Testing Going On”

  1. Steve Pemberton says:
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    Can you spot the similarities and differences? You have to look closely.

    Similarity – Each picture shows three peppermint-striped parachutes dropping a space capsule into the ocean.

    Difference – One picture shows what will be the routine method of returning the capsule to the Earth. The other picture shows a backup water landing that will only be needed in off-nominal abort situations.

    • Paul451 says:
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      One of these is an upgrade of a system that’s flown successfully four times.

      The other will fly a cut-down version in three years…

    • Matt_Tx says:
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      One system uses magic parachutes, reported in the press as able to descend a vehicle slower and more gently than the Orion parachute system and at the same time be “more accurate”.

      • Steve Pemberton says:
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        Well it might seem like magic compared to what has been done up until now, but in reality it will be done with several SuperDraco thrusters on the Dragon capsule. Shouldn’t be too hard for them to beat a standard round parachute system as that is a pretty low bar, the interesting thing will be to see just how accurate they can get it.

        Actually if they were coming down on SuperDracos alone they could be very accurate, the parachutes which apparently will be deployed for additional safety add more complexity as they essentially have to drag the parachutes around with them as they maneuver.

        • Steve Whitfield says:
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          I would have though that the ‘chutes would have been the main system, for reasons of fuel efficiency, and the thrusters would be used to fine tune the landing location. If steering Dracos were controlled by a straight forward negative feedback sysem to correct a real-time GPS location to target, that would be as simple and reliable as you could get (for a pin-point landing). Pick the right (high enough) radar altitude to cut in the Draco system and you probably wouldn’t need them in excess, unless you hit major cross winds, in which case all approach methods will be overtaxed, but the ‘chutes plus negative feedback thrusters would probably be the best performer. That’s how I see it, anyhow. I’d think that the SuperDracos would be used
          only in the final vertical portion of the landing, or for hover/avoidance, getting a relatively soft touch down with minimum fuel expeniture and maximum safety margin.

          • Paul451 says:
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            I would have though that the ‘chutes would have been the main system, for reasons of fuel efficiency,

            Elon (and trade studies, apparently) say not. If you have to have launch-abort thrusters and their fuel, you might as well use them at the end if you haven’t used them at the start.

          • DTARS says:
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            These comments here have me confused.
            It’s my understanding that under normal landing conditions dragon will not use chutes at all since it will have enough fuel to soft land after the atmosphere slows the vehicle to slow speed.

            Isn’t the chute used for abort mode only????

            After abort, dragon is low on super draco fuel, so you pop the chute not giving a damn where you land as long as it’s softly!!!!
            (maybe thrust dracos at the last second before landing, to cushion impact, if you have any fuel left at all.)

          • dogstar29 says:
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            Yes, good point, I’d forgotten that the same thrusters are used for the abort separation so fueel would not be sufficient for landing. Chutes will have to be aboard. OTOH aborts are almost all over water so a soft pinpoint landing isn’t needed. Whether the thrusters will be enough for normal landings without any use of parachutes is unclear.

          • Vladislaw says:
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            The fuel is DUEL use, from what I heard Musk say in an interview. In a normal launch the fuel would be used to land the dragon. In an abort during launch the fuel would be used to push the capsule away from the rocket and parachute landing.

          • DTARS says:
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            Guess I missed parachute part. Sounds like you might be the winner to me. Anybody sure???

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            I was under the impression that a powered landing would not use the parachutes, however, there is a recent video from SpaceX showing a powered landing also using parachutes – much like the Soyuz does.

            “During a normal spacecraft landing, the parachutes will be aided by the Dragon’s SuperDraco thrusters to provide a soft controlled landing. This redundancy on both the parachutes and thrusters is designed to ensure safe landings for crews.”

            So (maybe?) this solves the worry of the landing engines failing unexpectly – the plan is to use parachutes with SuperDracos. See here for 2 second animation starting at 00:41: http://youtu.be/zet-X_7MG_Q

          • Saturn1300 says:
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            Thanks. I had never seen that landing before. Looks like a tripod or bridle to hang it vertical.

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            it was a surprise to me, too. it does occur to me that this may be a transitional style of landing, i.e., first parachute-only splashdowns in the ocean, then Soyuz-style touchdowns on land with a parachute and retro-rocket firing of the Super Dracos, then finally Super Draco only powered landings.

          • Steve Pemberton says:
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            My hunch is that all NASA commercial crew flights provided by SpaceX will always go out of pad 39A and be water landings. NASA is a big customer and probably both of those conditions are what it will take to make them happy. They may not specify that as a requirement but Elon I’m sure is smart enough to know that’s what they really want. However other potential future customers may opt for a lower cost option which would include launching from a private SpaceX launch site and landing at a private SpaceX landing site.

            I mentioned launch site and landing site as separate entities for a reason. I realize that we all like to imagine Dragon landing on the same pad that it launched from, but realistically a coastal location that is suitable for launching may not be as suitable for landing. But that is easily solved by purchasing some barren land within 100 miles or so of the launch site to be used as a landing area, or maybe making a deal with a rancher who owns a lot of acres. Helicopters stationed at the launch site could be deployed to the landing site and be ready and waiting to pick up the crewmembers and bring them back to the launch site. Meanwhile a truck would have the capsule back to its hangar at the launch site within a few hours.

          • Steve Pemberton says:
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            Gwynne Shotwell stated: “The parachute system is an integral part of Dragon’s ability to provide a safe landing for nominal and abort conditions”

            The key word here is nominal, i.e. it seems that they are planning to use the chutes for normal landings not just aborts. My guess is that someone internal at SpaceX, or external (i.e. NASA) is concerned about bringing astronauts down on SuperDraco thrust alone due to potential for thruster issues. Perhaps the thruster pod failure in March 2013 underscored this concern (pure speculation on my part).

            Someone thinking this way will not consider having parachutes available only as a backup to thrusters to be good enough, because a thruster failure in the final minute of landing may not provide enough time for an emergency deploy of the mains to sufficiently slow the capsule prior to impact with the ground. So they would want the chutes to be deployed already, so that even a complete thruster failure in the last minute would be survivable.

            Although this then leads to the possibility that custom seat liners will be required on Dragon similar to Soyuz, so that the g forces of a hard parachute-only impact with the ground will be evenly distributed throughout the body. This adds some slight complication to ISS rotation missions. You may remember on Shuttle flights that delivered expedition members to ISS, those crewmembers did not officially become members of the ISS crew until their seat liner that rode up with them on the Shuttle had been transferred to the Soyuz that they were assigned to for reentry.

            If we assume that parachutes will be used all the way to the ground, then I would guess that after deployment of the mains, the Dracos and/or SuperDracos will be used only for some horizontal steering as necessary during the parachute descent, and then the SuperDracos will fire downward at the last second as with Soyuz to provide a cushioned landing. They have to wait until the last second to thrust downward to avoid collapsing the mains while they are still above the ground.

          • Paul451 says:
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            Another issue, of course, is that language/arguments used for the landing of the Falcon stages is likely mixed up with the language/arguments used when referring to the SuperDraco-powered capsule landings.

            What is acceptable for an F9 first-stage may not be appropriate for a first generation crew capsule.

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            it does occur to me that parachutes may be used in a transitional style of landing, i.e., first parachute-only splashdowns in the ocean, then Soyuz-style touchdowns on land with a parachute and retro-rocket firing of the Super Dracos, then finally Super Draco only powered landings.

          • DTARS says:
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            Questions

            How much margin is there in the dragon draco tanks?
            Is there enough to abort at MaxQ and land dragon without popping chutes?

            This milestone was optional maybe Spacex did this test just for the easy cash?

            Are parachutes for backup only??

            In an abort would dragon only pop chutes if fuel is to low??

          • Paul451 says:
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            How much margin is there in the dragon draco tanks?

            No margin. About 5 seconds total thrust for the Super-Dracos. Within an atmosphere, the normal Draco thrusters aren’t useful for anything but orientation; too weak.

            Is there enough to abort at MaxQ and land dragon without popping chutes?

            Definitely not. Even if the Dragon was intended to normally land on thrusters only, in an abort the SuperDracos only push the capsule up and away from the exploding launcher. At the top of the arc, the parachutes deploy, hopefully now far enough away from burning debris that they don’t catch on fire too.

            In an abort would dragon only pop chutes if fuel is to low??

            In an abort, the job of the abort engines is just to get the capsule away from the launcher, and high enough (in the case of an on-pad abort scenario) for the parachutes to have time to safely deploy. Aborts will always land on parachutes.

            [This applies to any capsule. Dragon, Orion, CST-100, Soyuz, Apollo… The shuttle was different. And Dream Chaser might be different, not sure. I know it uses a pusher-LAS, but I don’t know whether it uses parachutes for a launch-abort, or attempts a (RTLS) runway landing.]

          • Saturn1300 says:
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            DC: I have seen a on board video simulation of it RTLS. They have said and they will have to have parachutes for off runway emergency landings.

          • Steve Whitfield says:
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            Fair enough. But that would seem to rule out a soft landing at the end of an abort at any significant altitude. You can only use that fuel once. Ditto for obstacle avoidance on landing.

          • DTARS says:
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            Once??:
            I assumed that you can turn draco/super dracos on and off right??
            How big are the tanks???

          • Steve Whitfield says:
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            My point was that the fuel for Dracos and SuperDracos is going to be limited, both as a practical design limit and for safety reasons (you don’t want to be carrying unused fuel in your tanks during an abort landing or other irregular landing).

            So if you use the fuel to “get away” in an abort, which is likely to be fuel intensive, then there won’t be enough left for a “soft” landing.

            I suppose they could carry more thruster fuel, enough to do everything, but that robs from the lift for your payload and creates an additional fuel jettison requirement, which is a potential safety hazard, a tight time constraint, and means that you are restricted to a down range path where you can dump fuel.

            The design and operations goals should ideally be to make things simpler, not more complicated. Note: this is all conjecture on my part.

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            yes, Super Dracos are meant to be re-startable. on a launch abort, however, they will burn at full throttle for 5 seconds and consume all, or very nearly all, of their fuel.

          • Paul451 says:
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            But that would seem to rule out a soft landing at the end of an abort

            Definitely. During abort, they’d burn the superdracos for the full 5 seconds to get up to safe parachute-release height (if the abort is on the pad) and away from the exploding launcher (whether on the pad or at altitude.) There’d be nothing left for landing. The ‘chutes handle the landing. If you’re over land (say an on-pad abort with an on-shore wind) then it might be a rough landing, especially if you rake across trees/building/etc, but… considering the alternative…

            And the majority of aborts will be over the Atlantic, or perhaps eventually the Gulf. So a water landing. Which they’ve just tested.

            [And as you say elsewhere, you don’t want to be carrying fuel when you land, just-in-case, so you may as well burn it all during the abort rather than fool about with fuel dumping systems and all the risks inherent there.]

  2. Saturn1300 says:
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    During a normal spacecraft landing, the parachutes will be aided by the Dragon’s SuperDraco thrusters to provide a soft controlled landing(c&p).
    It looks like they are not going to make all SuperDraco landings. Sure glad to see that. Much safer. No pin point landings though with parachutes. These do not have a large hole in front to make them steerable. Some steering could be done with thrusters. A little to much forward speed and I think these parachutes would collapse. So no landing at KSC. Dry lake beds it is. Ought to be a lot of dust flying or snow like Soyuz. Dream Chaser has an edge there.
    This must be required by the NASA safety team. Not landing on water is normal and I wish on the next flight they will try it. The SuperDraco burns 200x the fuel that Dracos use. In an abort they only burn 5 sec. That may burn all of the fuel. The capsule is the same, so the fuel tanks are the same. They would not have enough fuel to land without parachutes. Also probably not enough to land on the Moon either. They might bring along more fuel in the service section and land on it.
    The SuperDracos are 20,000lb. thrust and there are 8. At full power that would be the same as a Merlin. They can throttle them, but not enough to have enough fuel. The 90lb. thrust Draco might be enough to cushion a parachute landing. SpaceX said it was up to NASA to let them come down on land. It would be nice to see a pin point landing, but what they have is fine. Also they said that NASA will have a big to do about the new system. I hope it is not a month late like this news.

    • dogstar29 says:
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      Some good points, but a launch abort would almost certainly be over water as the launch azimuth is to the east, so its logical to test abort landings over water, abd with the possibility of operating in a degraded condition during abort the parachutes may be a good plan. Personally i think the capsule would do best with a small steerable parasail to provide stabilization and guidance to the land touchdown area like the Armadillo STIG. The Super Dracos would then only be needed to cusion the final touchdown. I agree there isn’t enough fuel for an extended burn during descent as was shown on the original SpaceX video.

      • Steve Pemberton says:
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        They don’t need to land on a runway so I would think there is enough open area at KSC to land. Only issue is maybe starting a small grassfire during certain conditions, but fire personnel will already be on standby I assume. During reentry they are able to use lift to steer to a good parachute deploy point, and with some good computer software and good winds aloft data to determine the best point to deploy, they should be able to drop into the general vicinity just with parachutes alone, then make adjustments as needed with Draco.

        When thrusting forward remember that the sustained horizontal movement will cause the relative wind hitting the chutes to shift slightly from vertical, reducing the tendency to collapse. Of course there are limits with this, what those limits are I think will be interesting to find out. One limit is fuel, to maintain horizontal velocity they will be thrusting not only against wind resistance on the capsule but also on the chutes. But then again the chutes are helping reduce the vertical speed so you save some fuel there so that helps some.

        If they can’t develop the accuracy needed to land at a spaceport, then they just need a relatively flat uninhabited area, doesn’t necessarily need to be a dry lake bed.

        [Edit – this is a reply to Saturn13, I hit the wrong reply button]

        • Steve Whitfield says:
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          How about doing soft landings in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, with the Banana River as a back-up in case of trouble (ignore the salt water); that should keep space activities in the public’s awareness for a long while! Use a helicopter to return the spacecraft to the pad. Obviously I’m not serious, but it would get a lot of media attention.

  3. John Thomas says:
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    Also, one is using an abort system that has already been proven, the other a new untried approach.

    • Ben Russell-Gough says:
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      It’s not exactly blue-sky thinking, though. All that SpaceX are really doing is making the LAS reusable.

  4. Chad Overton says:
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    I dont think the Dragon parachute system will be used in concert with propulsive landing. The capsule hangs at an angle and would be difficult to control.

    • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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      at the very least, the parachute would have to be cut free before the engines are fired.

    • Saturn1300 says:
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      It does hang at angle since the hatch is in the way. They will have to fix that. More attach points. It will have to be vertical to fire thrusters for a soft landing. In this test it was vertical. But this might have been just for the test.