It was mentioned in a meeting late last week that the release of photos and videos was being held up by Army security, which had to review all of them before release.

So was this a test with cadavers? Or to create cadavers???
Just kidding. But gives one pause before volunteering for any NASA testing...

"No mention of a failure, a crash etc."

Yeah well, what do you expect...they're not going to put it on their website with a giant headline: "Sorry We Screwed Up. We Suck."

And you thought Soyuz landings could be rough! Who did the rigging on that thing, an intern? We had parachute deployment licked a long time ago. NASA didn't release this because it makes it appear they are back to square one in the crewed space launch and recovery business.

They should give the wreckage to Roswell NM.

The sequencing looks strange - perhaps the sequencing system failed. Testing off an airdrop platform is not the ideal way to go (but given the capsule size other options may not be practical.
Looks like prior to impact the main parachutes deployed OK but did not fully inflate. Causes could be:
* Disreef failure,
* Damaged parachute
* Poor parachute design
I also note that the capsule looks very unstable.

Is the capsule really that unstable - or a result of being dragged out of the plane?

The video posted earlier provided much more insight into the test failure. One could actually see the dynamics of the programmer (and subsequent) parachutes that failed to open.

The current video provides a better view of the capsule tumbling and crashing - just what you'd expect from mass media coverage. This test failure wasn't about the capsule (unless you were in it)! Please provide a link the original video where the cause of the failure is more apparent and less sensational.

As stated before it takes about two weeks to get the photoes from the testing grounds (check your facts) and here is whatt is on the nasa.gov site as to wht happened.

By the way why are none of the previous sucessful parachute tests talked about on Nasawatch.

The failed parachute -- called a programmer chute -- deployed, but it did not inflate properly and failed to get the test article that simulated the Orion crew module into the correct orientation, altitude and speed for the test, causing the parachute system for the test vehicle to fail.

"This is the most complicated parachute test NASA has run since the '60’s," said Carol Evans, test manager for the parachute system at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "We are taking a close look at what caused the set-up chutes to malfunction. A failure of set-up parachutes is actually one of the most common occurrences in this sort of test."

To test the first generation design of the recovery parachute system, a mock-up of the Orion crew module was dropped from a C-17 airplane at 25,000 feet altitude.

In addition to the parachute system for the mock-up, the test requires 10 parachutes for preparation of the test. Some of these parachutes extract the mock-up from the airplane. Then pyrotechnics fire to separate the mock-up from the pallet on which it sits while inside the plane. As the mock-up is released from the pallet, a programmer chute and two stabilization chutes are released to set up the proper test condition. At a predetermined time, those chutes are released to start the test of the Orion parachute system. The remaining test preparation parachutes return the pallet to the ground.

The Orion recovery parachute system is based on the parachute system used for the Apollo capsule and uses eight parachutes. There are three types of parachutes in the parachute assembly system: drogues that are designed to stabilize the spacecraft; pilots which pull out the main parachutes; and mains, which are the large parachutes that actually lower the spacecraft to the ground.

The two drogue chutes are deployed to slow the mock-up and ensure it is pointing in the right direction. The drogue chutes are then cut away, and three pilot chutes are deployed and in turn each pull out one of the three main 116-feet-diameter parachutes that will slow the mock-up to a safe landing speed following a launch abort. The pallet has its own parachute recovery system.

During the July 31 test, the programmer parachute and the two stabilization chutes released properly. The programmer parachute did not inflate properly, and the stabilization parachutes inflated but did not stay inflated. As a result, the mock-up dropped faster than intended.

When the test set-up chutes were released, the drogue chutes were immediately cut away, sending the mock-up into a free fall.

During the free fall, the mock-up began to tumble, creating forces that pulled the main parachutes out. Two of the three main parachutes broke free. The third parachute held, but it was torn, too damaged to slow the falling mock-up. The result was a landing that severely damaged the test mock-up.

In addition to testing the parachute system, one of the objectives of this test was to demonstrate the testing techniques. NASA engineers and managers are reviewing the test procedures and the test hardware and set-up, along with the video and photographs collected from the test, to determine what caused the programmer chute to fail.

Good for them! You test. You learn. You test again. This test shows real progress. If you think that another one thousand viewgraphs would avoid test anomalies, well, think again. Hindsight is 20/20.

In my book, this was a successful test. An unsuccessful test is one in which the systems are never exercised, or in which the data is not taken or is lost. It looks to me like they deployed the systems and at least got video and I suspect other good data for diagnosis. They will learn far more from this test than from an accidental success.

Congratulations on a big step forward for the Orion program.

Not sure how it got covered in the media at the time, but during the testing of the Gemini escape system (ejection seats), the entire astronaut corps was taken out to witness a demonstration. When the system fired, the hatches failed to blow off, decapitating one of the test dummies. One astronaut (I think it may have been John Young) quipped "That's sure one hell of a headache."

The more things change, the more they remain the same. Any test dummies aboard this one?

That looks to me like there were two parachute malfunctions. Initially the drogue parachute was not properly deployed. The drogue is supposed to aid in stability. Because the vehicle was unstable and turning head over heels during the deployment of the main parachute, that parachute did not fully deploy either and never had a chance to do so because of the tangled, twisted parachute lines; as a result the entire final descent was way too fast. A streaming parachute does very little to slow you down. It looks like what's called a "line-twist malfunction". I would say that these problems didn't have much to do with design of the parachutes or with rigging.

As stated above, I thought this was a good test. That's what tests are for. The media plays up when there are problems, but as an engineer, I would want the test to be extreme to make sure I understand the environment.

In this case, it looks like it might be a test equipment failure (most likely cause of a test failure IMO). I would think that this would make it less newsworthy and no big hurry to get results out before internal reviews. Claims of holding things back would seem to be related to a desire to play up unfavorable NASA news.

What I would hope the engineers would get out of it is off nominal situations the capsule could get into and are there any "easy" fixes that would make the system more robust.

Bring back Lockheed original CEV design. This crash is another reason to go with versatile lifting body with parachutes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:CEV_Lockheed_Martin.jpg

Was this subcontracted out to Acme, by any chance?

Solution? Add wings and wheels. Oh, wait! We already have one of those.

Either they underestimated how difficult this is going to be or they wanted to mock and test something really quick to verify their assumptions and a failure was expected. I hope it was the latter.

This is why we test-- to find the failures, and get them out of the way when it's just a test, and not in flight. The whole point of testing is failure, otherwise there'd be no purpose in doing the test.

It's a pity that the failure here wasn't in the actual Orion system, but in the chutes dragging the vehicle out of the airplane and orienting it. Ten parachutes in this test! Yow!

"The test proved unsuccessful when a test set-up parachute failed"
"the result was a landing that severely damaged the test mock-up."

And then:

"No mention of a failure, a crash etc"

Eh what? Even for someone that do not have English as 1st language (and that include me), it's pretty clear that something that rely on a parachute will crash if the parachute fail. It's one thing to have constructive criticism (and you have that sometimes)- another one to be bitter and down right childish in the nitpicking.

This reminds me of all the X-38 test failures. Do you think it could be because the same people who never got it right on X-38 are working on Orion?

Many thanks to me. The test description is the only coherent set of comments I've heard here at NASAWatch about this nonevent. Me makes clear that the first set of parachutes are not Orion systems, but rather systems that create test conditions for the Orion components. It was these parachutes that malfunctioned, which therefore say nothing good or bad about the Orion systems. Seems like a non event.
Keith is getting just weird about misplacing his intensity on the CxP development. There are plenty of CxP areas that do need analysis and announcement to the world, why muddy the waters with this?

The first thing that struck me is simply how large the command module test article is, because of the size of the pallet needed to get it into and out of the C-17 in order to simply set up the actual recovery system test.

From what I can tell, the parachute array that initially failed was the system that got the pallet out of the '17; then, the CM separated from the pallet sucessfully, but apparently the deployment system for the CM recovery array failed.

So the first failure was not anything the CM would take into orbit (and need to get back safely), true?; it was the pallet array, and after that the entire test sequence was compromised. I'm actually kind of surprised it worked as well as it did, given the initial failure. A similar challenge would be if the C-17 had lost an engine on take-off.

What this actually reminded me of was various USA/USAF operations with dropping very large loads (M551s, for example) from cargo aircraft; that was never a simple exercise, so I'm thinking that this failure shows it is a challenging exercise simply to get the CM test article into the air so the recovery array CAN be tested. How much cross-polination is there between DOD and NASA parachute experts?

Keith runs a great website here, but there's a lot more to consider here than simply banging on NASA.

X-38 had a couple mishaps, including a parachute failure without the actual vehicle being used. I knew those people and worked with them. The parafoil system actually worked quite well in testing at Dryden, and I have many memories and pictures to prove it.

X-38 was coming along well and would have been a much more desirable alternative to the one we have now. (Soyuz)

I think perhaps that failure in early testing phase is a good way of learning lessons before you have a "ballistic reentry"

Failure is a standard part of testing. There would be no progress without it. Berating NASA for not drawing attention to everyday failures is absurd.

...as I used to say in the turbine business;
"Run it, break it, find it, fix it. Repeat as necessary."

This is exactly what boilerplates are for, and yes, this WAS a good test! You learn nothing from computer simulations.

I'll bet that this was the first real sunlight some of these people have seen in months...

That why they TEST--AND TEST AGAIN-what is the complaint-about testing-That how they get it right

"I'll bet that this was the first real sunlight some of these people have seen in months..."

Actually we have seen the sunlight 12 previous times (and successfully I might add)

And yes this is why we (or any other engineering person or persons) test and test again. You can only simulate so many times, then you have to take what you know or think you know and test it in the real world that is REAL engineering.

Yes. Absolutely! You test and test until you get it right. What's the complaint? This is how it's supposed to work!

This is what cutting edge technology is all about. Eventually when the tests are all successful, our nation will have developed and mastered a fully working parachute!

Bet NASA wishes they gave the contract to Boeing...not to late ya know.

All the people complaining about this "failed" test are partially responsible for NASA's risk aversion and "slow progress". Back in the 1960's there were many, many "failed" tests. You learn a LOT more from a failed test than a simulation or FEA. I cringe to think how people would react today if we had the level of failure during the testing process that we did during Mercury and Apollo.

But now, when NASA has a "failed" test, people jump on it as evidence that they are doing a crappy job and things aren't going well. This is also somewhat related to the phenomenon of interest in space travel being diluted over time because science fiction movies' CG effects make NASAs real achievements look pale in comparison. As a result, people expect perfection and nothing less; when NASA fails to deliver that (by means of a "failed" test that actually gives them lots of great data) people become more skeptical and less supportive of the program.

I love science fiction but it is destroying real progress when it comes to space exploration.

Ahem -

Northrop was lead on the Northrop Grumman/Boeing team for CEV, not Boeing - I should know, I spent 18 months in El Segundo and Redondo Beach working on the proposal.

We had a good team, and after LM's experience with X-33, and Boeing/Rockwell/North American's with the STS, perhaps NASA should have selected the team that actually had ancestry on US HSF, from STS to the Apollo CSM AND LM to Gemini to Mercury to the freaking X-15.

Just saying.

Water under the bridge, however; good luck to LM on CEV and NG on the LSAM.

Moon 'er bust!

There's your problem!

The landing looked reasonably smooth even with the chute not 100% open. The crew would mostly likely have survived, so it wasn't a complete disaster

Wishful thinking Walter

the chute opens right at the end.

Tests are *supposed* to fail, up to a point, that's how you learn the limits. A successful test doesn't tell you where the failure point is.