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good morning welcome to the

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international space station flight

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control in the mission control center in

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houston uh as you know one of the things

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that the space station crew really

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focuses on is getting uh the information

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we need to be able to send crews farther

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than ever into deep space and the

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spacecraft that we'll be doing that with

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is the orion it's being built at kennedy

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space center getting it ready for its

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first flight test coming up in december

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but in the meantime we actually have a

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parachute test scheduled for wednesday

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and we have laura kearney from the orion

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program here to tell us a little bit

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about that thanks so much for joining us

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laura sure my pleasure glad to be here

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all right so tell us a little bit about

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orion and the parachute system that

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we're going to be testing on wednesday

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okay we have a very complex parachute

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system

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what we depend on to make sure the crews

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get home and land safely

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we'll be testing

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this wednesday the full sequence of

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events that

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lead the parachute system home it goes

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all the way from the time the mortars

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fire the ford bay cover parachutes all

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the way down to the time we land so

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we've done several of these tests and i

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know there have been a number of

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different sequences we've tried some

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failures um kind of simulating different

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things that could go wrong just to be

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sure that we'd be okay even if they did

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but this is going to be the full

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sequence and i think you mentioned the

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forward bay cover that

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is a cover over orion that that has to

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go away before the parachute can deploy

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right yeah that's right um for the whole

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test sequence we'll actually deploy out

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of the c-17 at about 35 000

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feet

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and the spacecraft actually deploys on a

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platform and it is released from the

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platform and then it is under what we

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call programmers which puts the

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the test unit at the right test

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conditions it gets to be like kind of

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like white right that's right we wanted

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her under as flight like conditions as

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we can get it

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um and then we'll start the actual

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mission sequence and so uh you'll first

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see the four bay cover uh parachutes

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deploy um and then you'll actually see

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the four big cover itself jettison

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and then after that point is when the

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main parachutes will start to their

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sequence you'll actually see two drogues

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come out first which will slow the

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vehicle down

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uh and then it's followed by the three

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pilots and the three mains which the

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vehicle then lands under okay it takes a

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lot to get orion safely down i guess it

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does it does and everything has to work

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just right it's all timed just right

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down to the split second when things

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need to fire to make sure that we don't

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have any contact among pieces of

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hardware

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so there's a lot of detail that goes

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into making sure the sequence works just

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right and i guess let me make sure i can

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get the numbers right here so i think

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ryan will be coming back from

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a very high orbit 3600 miles which is

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farther about 15 times farther than the

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space station orbits and coming in at a

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speed of about 20 000 miles per hour it

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needs to slow down to 20 miles per hour

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so the earth's atmosphere helps us with

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that but then it's all up to the

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parachutes that's exactly right that's

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exactly right that's the job of these

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shoots and of course we want it to work

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because eventually we'll have people

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inside orion and they'll want to splash

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down at a little slower than 20 thousand

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miles per hour that's right for the

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flight uh we'll be splashing down on the

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water here for this test we'll be in the

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desert and yuma arizona but for the

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flight we'll be touching down in water

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and we've been to yuma a number of times

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and done done a few of these tests right

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we have this is the 14th test in our

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test sequence the test team has become

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just experts at getting this down it

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takes a lot to pull a test like this off

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because there are a lot of people

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involved not just the nasa team but

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the air force and and all the other

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folks that are out there making it

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happen so it's a complicated test have

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they gone pretty good so far

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they have really gone great we've

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learned a lot that's why we test is to

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learn things and so in every test you

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know little things will go wrong and the

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test team is able to bring that data

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back

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and fix it and tweak the hardware and so

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a lot of what we learned has been

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incorporated into the eft-1 flight

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hardware that is already installed uh in

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the onc down in in florida

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so we have actually bought down a lot of

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risk by flying uh these test flights and

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increase the reliability of the overall

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system hopefully we feel pretty

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confident then that they'll work well on

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this flight test that's eft one

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exploration flight test one and again

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that's in december

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that's right this test will also have

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some of the ground crew the the helos

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from the navy and some of the folks uh

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the chase aircraft will be out as well

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they'll be using this test as sort of a

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dry run for the eft-1 recovery

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operations as well so that's sort of a

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secondary objective at the same time

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okay well i hope it all goes well thanks