Mary-Louise Hoffman
Larry Price, a deputy program manager at Lockheed Martin, said data from the December test flight of the Orion spacecraft helped validate the company’s spacecraft design and performance models, Florida Today reported Tuesday.
James Dean writes Price offered details of the Exploration Flight Test-1 during a presentation at a National Space Club Florida Committee luncheon Tuesday.
The company extracted and analyzed data from approximately 1,200 flight sensors and submitted a report to NASA.
“So now the engineers, as you can imagine, are just loving this, poring through all of this data, 1,200 channels of data, to improve the design for the next vehicle,” Price told the publication.
NASA and Lockheed conducted an Orion unmanned trial run on Dec. 5 to assess the space exploration vehicle’s computers, heat shield, parachutes and separation systems.
Price told the publication that Orion’s heat shield, which is designed to protect the spacecraft from very high temperature on its return to Earth, performed well during the maiden flight.
Dean reports the program receives an estimated $1 billion in government funds annually.
