I don’t know how I missed this and doing lots of background research for this week’s NASA/AIAA 3rd space exploration conference I only found one reference to it in Space Daily but on 30 January ILC Dover put out this statement about a NASA study for an Orion CEV airbag/floatation system
The statement says: “A new study initiated by NASA is underway for a “singular” landing system that works for land and water landings and protects the Astronauts in contingency landing situations. ILC and Airborne [Systems North America (ASNA)] have combined their engineering and analysis teams and their Orion Gen-2 airbag designs for the new study. Testing is underway at NASA Langley Research Center for the Gen-2 airbag systems produced at these companies prior to the teaming agreement. Results from these tests will be used to help select the best features of each design”
The statement goes on to say that NASA will “reassess the nominal landing decision in early March this year”
Back in December there was a Constellation programme progress press briefing (with phone bridge) and a lot of questions were being asked about the nominal landing baseline for Orion changing from land to water – triggered by the NASAWatch.com report – and we were told there would be an Orion focused briefing in the not too distant future as there was so much interest; but it never happened
I will certainly be asking a few questions about this new study at this week’s conference
