If At First You Don't Succeed.. Launch, Launch Again

It took a few tries, but the launch of a NASA Terrier-Improved Orion suborbital rocket was successfully conducted at 7:16 a.m. EDT, Friday, from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The launch was to test several new rocket and spacecraft technologies including the Small Rocket/Spacecraft Technology (SMART) platform, Autonomous Flight Safety System, Low Cost Telemetry Transmitter, and an electro hydrodynamic-based thermal control unit.

Rescheduled after a launch abort that occurred the day before, the launch team determined that a misfire occurred because of a short circuit in the ground electrical support system. The rocket and the payload were undamaged by the short circuit and the ground support system repaired the issue.

The Small Rocket/Spacecraft Technology (SMART) platform, created by engineers at the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., and the Department of Defense Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) Office at the Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, is designed to provide faster, less expensive access to space because of its modular, reconfigurable design. Users can adapt SMART to fulfill a variety of missions ranging from optical imaging to radio-frequency applications.

Comparable in size to an old-fashioned hatbox, measuring nearly 16 inches in diameter, the SMART microsatellite can be integrated and readied for launch in as few as seven days for less than $1 million, said Goddard engineer Jaime Esper, platform designer.

“We’ve developed a creative way to reduce mission life-cycle times, with the resulting savings in cost. This enables a new class of researchers who can’t afford the high costs of getting into space.”

Another emerging new technology installed on SMART is an electro hydrodynamic-based thermal control unit. The technology uses electric fields to pump coolant through tiny ducts inside a thermal cold plate. The advantage is that the system requires no moving parts, just electrodes to apply the voltage to move the coolant.

The next launch currently scheduled from Wallops is a NASA Terrier-Improved Orion carrying educational experiments. The launch window is June 23 – 25 between 6 and 9 a.m.

FMI: www.nasa.gov/wallops