SPACE: WHERE ARE WE GOING? : J-2X ENGINE

Saturday, January 28, 2012

NASA'S J-2X ENGINE HAS POWER PACK TESTED

The following excerpt is from the NASA website:

NASA'S J-2X ENGINE KICKS OFF 2012 WITH POWERPACK TESTING

"BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. -- A new series of tests on the engine that will 
help carry humans to deep space will begin next week at NASAâ€™s 
Stennis Space Center in southern Mississippi. The tests on the J-2X 
engine bring NASA one step closer to the first human-rated liquid 
oxygen and liquid hydrogen rocket engine to be developed in 40 years.

Tests will focus on the powerpack for the J-2X. This highly efficient 
and versatile advanced rocket engine is being designed to power the 
upper stage of NASA's Space Launch System, a new heavy-lift launch 
vehicle capable of missions beyond low-Earth orbit. The powerpack 
comprises components on the top portion of the engine, including the 
gas generator, oxygen and fuel turbopumps, and related ducts and 
valves that bring the propellants together to create combustion and 
generate thrust.

"The J-2X upper stage engine is vital to achieving the full launch 
capability of the heavy-lift Space Launch System," said William 
Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for the Human 
Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. "The testing today 
will help insure that a key propulsion element is ready to support 
exploration across the solar system." 

About a dozen powerpack tests of varying lengths are slated now 
through summer at Stennisâ€™ A-1 Test Stand. By separating the engine 
components -- the thrust chamber assembly, including the main 
combustion chamber, main injector and nozzle -- engineers can more 
easily push the various components to operate over a wide range of 
conditions to ensure the partsâ€™ integrity, demonstrate the safety 
margin and better understand how the turbopumps operate. 

"By varying the pressures, temperatures and flow rates, the powerpack 
test series will evaluate the full range of operating conditions of 
the engine components," said Tom Byrd, J-2X engine lead in the SLS 
Liquid Engines Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in 
Huntsville, Ala. "This will enable us to verify the components' 
design and validate our analytical models against performance data, 
as well as ensure structural stability and verify the combustion 
stability of the gas generator."

This is the second powerpack test series for J-2X. The powerpack 1A 
was tested in 2008 with J-2S engine turbomachinery originally 
developed for the Apollo Program. Engineers tested these heritage 
components to obtain data to help them modify the design of the 
turbomachinery to meet the higher performance requirements of the 
J-2X engine. 

"The test engineers on the A-1 test team are excited and ready to 
begin another phase of testing which will provide critical data in 
support of the Space Launch System," said Gary Benton, J-2X engine 
testing project manager at Stennis.

J-2X is being developed for Marshall by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne of 
Canoga Park, Calif."

STAR FLASH

What caused this outburst of V838 Mon? For reasons unknown, star V838 Mon's outer surface suddenly greatly expanded with the result that it became the brightest star in the entire Milky Way Galaxy in January 2002. Then, just as suddenly, it faded. A stellar flash like this had never been seen before -- supernovas and novas expel matter out into space. Although the V838 Mon flash appears to expel material into space, what is seen in the above image from the Hubble Space Telescope is actually an outwardly moving light echo of the bright flash. In a light echo, light from the flash is reflected by successively more distant rings in the complex array of ambient interstellar dust that already surrounded the star. V838 Mon lies about 20,000 light years away toward the constellation of the unicorn (Monoceros), while the light echo above spans about six light years in diameter. Image Credit: NASA, ESA

THE SPIDERWEB GALAXY

Looking like a spider's web swirled into a spiral, Galaxy IC 342 presents its delicate pattern of dust in this image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Seen in infrared light, faint starlight gives way to the glowing bright patterns of dust found throughout the galaxy's disk. At a distance of about 10 million light-years, IC 342 is relatively close by galactic standards, however our vantage point places it directly behind the disk of our own Milky Way. The intervening dust makes it difficult to see in visible light, but infrared light penetrates this veil easily. IC 342 belongs to the same group as its even more obscured galactic neighbor, Maffei 2. IC 342 is nearly face-on to our view, giving a clear, top-down view of the structure of its disk. It has a low surface brightness compared to other spirals, indicating a lower density of stars (seen here as a blue haze). Its dust structures show up much more vividly (red). Blue dots are stars closer to us, in our own Milky Way. New stars are forming in the disk at a healthy rate. The very center glows especially brightly in the infrared, highlighting an enormous burst of star formation occurring in this tiny region. To either side of the center, a small bar of dust and gas is helping to fuel this central star formation. Data from Spitzer's infrared array camera are shown in blue (3.6 microns), green (4.5 microns) and red (5.8 and 8.0 microns). Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

JUMPING TO WARP SPEED

This cockpit view of a hypothetical spacecraft traveling at eight-tenths the speed of light shows the visual distortions that would be experienced at such high speeds. The star field is actually being wrapped toward the front of the craft in addition to being significantly blue-shifted. NASA Glenn leads the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project, NASA's primary effort to produce near-term, credible, and measurable progress toward the technology breakthroughs needed to revolutionize space travel and enable interstellar voyages. NASA Lewis (now Glenn) Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio.

OBSERVATION FROM THE SPACE STATION