CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA. — Friday’s launch, flight and recovery of NASA Orion Experimental Flight Test-1 could not have gone any better for United Launch Alliance, said an elated Jim Sponnick, vice president of ULA’s Atlas and Delta rocket program.
“It was just a picture-perfect day, from beginning to end,” Sponnick said. “That’s really a testament to years of hard really capable folks working all of the details and that all culminated in a launch like we saw today.”
The first launch attempt was scrubbed Thursday after weather delays and malfunctions of two hydrogen fuel valves on the ULA Delta IV Heavy rocket carrying Orion to space. But Sponnick said the mission was never at risk.
“Liquid yydrogen is minus-423 degrees Fahrenheit, and it’s extremely hard to design hardware to function at such an extremely cold temperature,” Sponnick said. “As we practice and as we design our systems, we stop when the rocket is telling us that something is not right. “
The fix turned out to be frequent and periodic cycling of the valves to keep them moving — a fix that was not necessary to use on Friday since Orion launched at the start of the launch window.
EFT-1 brings NASA one step closer to the goal of crewed deep space flight: The agency will next launch an uncrewed Orion mission in 2018, and a crewed mission in 2021. Sponnick hopes Friday, however, will serve as inspiration for the next generation to dream big.
“Many of us got into this business because of the excitement of human spaceflight,” he said. “It was Apollo 11 as a young boy for me that got me so excited. I’m hoping it’s events like today will serve to excite many, many others to do the same.”
Laura Keeney: lkeeney@denverpost.com, 303-954-1337 or
