Prototype Tested for 1st Rescue Spacecraft

The prototype of the world’s first space ambulance, designed to provide emergency escapes for the crews of the International Space Station after it goes into Earth orbit, made its debut flight Thursday morning.

The X-38--a whale-shaped, wingless vehicle with fins that look as if they were inspired by a 1956 Cadillac--is the first new passenger spacecraft to reach the flight-testing stage since the shuttle was developed more than two decades ago.

The craft is meant to bring the space station’s crew members safely back to Earth in any emergency in which there is not enough time to launch a shuttle to collect them.

The windowless, pilotless craft is designed to be fully automated, to accommodate even badly injured crew members. The vehicle would use satellite-based navigation aids to carry it to one of several designated landing fields.

In Thursday’s X-38 mission, a fiberglass prototype of the spacecraft was dropped from under the wing of a B-52 bomber 23,000 feet above Edwards. It flew free for only about four seconds before the first of a series of parachutes was deployed.

NASA officials said the mission was aimed primarily at testing the parachute system, steering mechanisms and landing apparatus.

Although the seven-minute flight was not free of glitches--a twist in the main parachute’s lines caused several anxious seconds among onlookers before the chute fully unfurled--the X-38 landed relatively softly in the desert northeast of Lancaster, less than 1,000 feet off target.

“This is a 10,” said mission director John Muratore after the flight.

Muratore, who works at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, is credited with the idea of combining two aviation technologies--lifting bodies and advanced parachute design--to come up with an emergency vehicle that can be built at a cost far below original $2-billion estimates.

At this point, NASA has spent about $10 million on the X-38. The budget for completion of the project, including building four fully outfitted spacecraft, is about $500 million.

In an emergency, the craft would detach from the space station and leave orbit. As it reentered the upper atmosphere, the flat undersurface of the X-38 would serve as a heat shield and then generate lift for an unpowered glide through the upper atmosphere--much as the bottom of the space shuttle does. At 50,000 feet, the chutes would be deployed.

Muratore said this first flight, after three years of development, “was not quite as clean as we would have liked . . . but that’s the purpose of testing--to refine everything more and more as we go along.”

In addition to being elated, he was also obviously relieved.

“Parachute testing is tough,” he said, “because when things go bad, it’s pretty spectacular.”

Approximately 20 more tests of X-38 prototypes will be conducted at Edwards over the next several years. If all goes according to plan, an X-38 with the capacity to carry the entire seven-person crew of the space station will be fully operational in 2003.

The space station will be partly inhabited before then by construction crews, who will be provided with a Russian Soyuz escape capsule for emergencies until the X-38 is ready. A Soyuz is routinely parked on the troubled Russian Mir space station for that purpose.

For the Thursday test, the prototype was attached to the bottom right wing of the B-52.

Almost exactly on schedule at 7:30 a.m., the B-52 took off. About an hour later, the X-38 was released.

The last of three chutes, making its appearance about 1 1/2 minutes into the test, was a bright, rectangular parafoil--a highly maneuverable parachute--capable of making pinpoint, soft landings.

Shortly after it was deployed, NASA personnel watching on large video screens at Dryden Flight Research Center--the NASA facility at Edwards--began expressing concern. “That doesn’t look right,” said one.

The twisted lines had prevented the parafoil from reaching full wingspan.

“Not good, not good,” repeated another NASA worker, softly, several times.

“I think we all had a little adrenaline going,” Muratore said later.

Muratore could have deployed a backup parafoil at that point, but decided instead to give the X-38 the chance to resolve the situation on its own.

Apparently it did just that, because suddenly the parafoil blossomed to its full, 7,350-square-foot size.

“There it is, yes!” came the cry from the NASA observation room.

At the landing spot, near a bombing range on the eastern edge of Edwards, a NASA engineer used a laptop computer to send steering commands to the parafoil. The X-38 landed with a thud that produced a small cloud of desert dust.

Muratore said data from all aspects of the flight will be analyzed before the next test takes place in about two months. As tests progress, they will be started from higher elevations to make sure that the flat bottom of the spacecraft can successfully act as a lifting body to slow the X-38’s descent.

Because no pilot is necessary, no manned tests of the X-38 have been scheduled, according to Bob Baron, the project’s manager at Dryden.

“The first real manned test,” Baron said, “will probably be by the first person who breaks a leg up there and has to get back quick.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Making Space Safer

An unmanned prototype of the X-38, intended to become the emergency crew-return vehicle for the seven-astronaut International Space Station, was dropped from under the wing of a B-52 bomber in a test flight over Edwards Air Force Base.

*

X-38

Length: 28.5 feet.

Width: 14.5 feet.

Weight: 16,000 lbs.

*

The test flight

1. X-38 is attached under the wing of a B-52 and flown to an altitude of about 40,000 feet.

2. The vehicle is released and glides unpowered, like a space shuttle.

3. Parachutes deployed.

4. Steerable parafoil parachute, like those used by skydivers, is used to bring the crew-return vehicle in for a landing.

5. Steering of the flexible parafoil, which measures about 6,000 square feet, is done by a ground controller.

6. Actual vehicle will be steered by an automated guidance control system and will land on skids rather than wheels.

Source: NASA