Last week I was surprised to see a ring shape structure with solar panels detach from the Ares V's Earth departure stage just before trans-lunar injection, while relaxing watching another Constellation architecture video at the AIAA/ESA/Eumetsat Space Operations 2008 conference in the beautiful Heidelberg
So surprised I fired off an email to the helpful PR folks at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center asking if the skirt was a recent change and this was the reply from Ares projects manager Steve Cook - see extended entry
"This is not a recent change. We have had a loiter skirt concept since the earliest Earth departure stage (EDS) studies. It is jettisonable structural ring on the aft end of the EDS which is mounted to the dedicated power and thermal control systems required to maintain the EDS in LEO prior to the trans-lunar injection burn. The loiter skirt is shed before trans-lunar injection to avoid carrying extra mass to the moon."
I have had a good look through the Youtube hosted Constellation videos and couldn't find the video we were shown by NASA's Greg Chavers and tried to google EDS images to see if the loiter skirt with its identifable blue solar panels could be seen in any of them, but no luck
Now it is true that Aviation Week's Frank Morring mentioned the skirt in passing in this article but I don't remember NASA's exploration launch project office's advanced planning manager and former Apollo programme rocket engineer Phil Sumrall (Frank and I did the interview with Phil at the same time at the 3rd space exploration conference) mentioning that it was expendable and I didn't mention it all in my article or my blog post and I can't find any mention of this skirt anywhere in the English language media before February - care of Lexis Nexis
As for speculating why such a feature of the EDS should suddenly appear in videos now, it is true that solar panels were needed by the EDS when it had its 90-day plus low Earth orbit loiter before docking with the Orion crew exploration vehicle but Sumrall told us that at a 4-day or less loiter batteries could be sufficient
Or have they realised that solar panels on a skirt could be used for one to four days and then detached to reduce EDS mass and improve its delta-v capability? They do have an issue with Altair's ability to get the Lunar Architecture Team's preferred cargo mass to the lunar surface; 2,000kg with crew as opposed to LAT's 6,000kg with crew target
Anyway, my search for the video I saw did turn this up; another Constellation video that I had'nt seen but not the one from Heidelberg. I can't remember if this was shown at the 3rd space exploration conference in Denver in February or not
on May 19, 2008 7:52 PM | Reply
Sure, it's been there a while if you know where to look.
http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=105664#105664
Cheers for all the sharp interviews and reports.
on May 19, 2008 7:57 PM | Reply
Google: Ares V loiter skirt
First two links - presentation from 2/08 & fact sheet from nov 07.
http:\\www.nasa.gov\pdf\214603main_Sumrall2-26-08.pdf
http:\\www.nasa.gov\pdf\187392main_aresV_fact_sheet.pdf
Nov 07 has loiter skirt id'd and conceptual pix with arrays unfurled.
on May 19, 2008 8:03 PM | Reply
One more:
dec 07, picture entitled:"Loiter Skirt jettison"
http://www.spaceanimation.com/earthorbit.html
on May 19, 2008 11:13 PM | Reply
Ares V has been in planning stages for so long, literally any recent change can be considered an old one.
on May 20, 2008 9:26 AM | Reply
Thanks for that everyone, one great thing about the internet are all the accessible people who for professonal or amateur reasons have a lot of specialist knowledge.
The 26 February Phil Sumrall presentation is from the 3rd space exploration conference, which I attended. There was a mass of material from that event and I guess I missed it among everything else.
Interesting that the November dated fact sheet has it as well. I must admit I didn't realise they updated those. I'll check them in future.
It is interesting that Cook talks about it being an early concept. Of course that doesn't mean they adopted it as part of the design early on. It may be making an appearence now as a part of an updated baseline design for the reasons I gave in the blog posting.
on May 20, 2008 10:34 AM | Reply
There's more material out there than anyone can imagine let alone read. We rely on you to dig out the details from the people doing this amazing stuff.
Added your blog to our list of sources:
http://www.newmars.com/wiki/index.php/Sources
Cheers!
on May 20, 2008 10:40 AM | Reply
I'll certainly do my best to find all those golden nuggets of info but no journalist can claim to find it all, and my brief covers aerospace technology and UAVs so I can't spend all my time on spaceflght; so anytime you guys, and gals, out there spot something you think us journos have missed, give us a shout.
Thanks for adding Hyperbola to your list of sources, it is much appreciated!!
on May 20, 2008 3:13 PM | Reply
Any news when the rollout of WK2 will be?