
Nasa has conducted the second to last splashdown test for its Orion spacecraft as the agency prepares to eventually send humans to Mars.

Scientists at NASA's Langley facility on Thursday used a pendulum and explosives to fling a test capsule into a pool of water at about 25 mph.

The 11-foot craft disappeared behind a bowl-shaped splash before bouncing buoyantly against safety netting.

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A mockup of NASA's Orion spacecraft, a deep space vessel that is slated to eventually travel to Mars, hits the water in a simulated ocean splashdown test at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., Thursday, Aug. 25, 2016. An unmanned test flight is scheduled for 2018 with the first crewed flight is slated for 2023.

ORION'S NEXT TEST Nasa's Orion stacked atop a 70 metric ton Space Launch System rocket will launch from a newly refurbished Kennedy Space Center in November 2018. The uncrewed Orion will travel into Distant Retrograde Orbit, breaking the distance record reached by the most remote Apollo spacecraft, and then 30,000 miles farther out (275,000 total miles). The mission will last 22 days and will test system readiness for future crewed operations. Advertisement

More than 500 instruments gauged aspects of the impact, including the level of strain on the carbon fiber heatshield and aluminum cabin.

Crash test dummies were also inside to measure safety designs.

Orion sailed through its first unmanned test flight in 2014, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.

Another unmanned launch is scheduled for 2018.

The agency hopes Orion will carry astronauts into space by 2023.

'We're very proud of what we do here and we're happy to be making this contribution to Orion,' said project chief engineer Jim Corliss.

The forces that hit a spacecraft at splashdown determine the design of more than half of its structure, and Nasa says understanding those forces is critical for astronaut safety.

'A water landing is not a trivial event at all,' Corliss said.

'With these tests, we're helping to protect the crew.'

Lara Kearney, manager of the Orion Crew and Service Module Office at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, traveled to Langley to watch the test.

'Orion is a one-of-a kind spacecraft, and we're testing it in a one-of-a kind facility,' she said.

'Langley has a rich history in impact testing and the Hydro Impact Basin is a world-class facility that gives us the ability to control the specific impact conditions of interest with a high degree of accuracy.'

'Over the course of this test series, the test article and the facility have performed nearly flawlessly,' Kearney said. 'I'm very proud of the team.'

Thursday's drop was the ninth in a series of 10 tests taking place at Langley's Landing and Impact Research Facility.

It was designed to simulate one of the Orion spacecraft's most stressful landing scenarios, a case where one of the capsule's three main parachutes fails to deploy.

That would cause Orion to approach its planned water landing faster than normal and at an undesirable angle.

THE SPACE LAUNCH SYSTEM Eventually, SLS will stand 322ft (98 metres) tall, provide 8.4 million pounds of thrust at lift-off, and weigh 5.5 million pounds. It will also carry 70 metric tons or 154,000 lbs of payload - equivalent to approximately 77 one-ton pickup trucks' worth of cargo. To get off the ground, it requires twin solid rocket boosters, powerful engines, flight computers, avionics and the core stage. The core stage, towering more than 200ft (61 metres) tall with a diameter of 27.6 feet (8.4 metres), will carry cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen that will feed the vehicle's four RS-25 engines. Once the crew module passes its structural tests it will undergo final assembly, integration and entire vehicle testing in order to prepare for EM-1, when Orion is launched atop Nasa's Space Launch System (SLS) for the first time. Pictured is the SLS in comparison to other rockets Advertisement

Under ideal conditions, the Orion capsule would slice into the water of the Pacific Ocean traveling about 17 miles per hour.

Thursday's test had it hitting the pool at about 20 mph, and in a lateral orientation. Instead of being pushed down into their seats, astronauts in this scenario would splashdown to the side.

'We're looking at some of the hardest impacts, the ones that could potentially pose the most risk of injury to the crew or damaging the structure,' Corliss said.

A mockup of NASA's Orion spacecraft, a deep space vessel that is slated to eventually travel to Mars, hits the water in a simulated ocean splashdown test at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., Thursday, Aug. 25, 2016. An unmanned test flight is scheduled for 2018 with the first crewed flight is slated for 2023.(AP Photo/Steve Helber)

A mockup of NASA's Orion spacecraft, a deep space vessel that is slated to eventually travel to Mars, creates a huge wave as it hits the water in a simulated ocean splashdown test at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., Thursday, Aug. 25, 2016. An unmanned test flight is scheduled for 2018 with the first crewed flight is slated for 2023.(AP Photo/Steve Helber)

A mockup of NASA's Orion spacecraft, a deep space vessel that is slated to eventually travel to Mars, floats to the surface after a simulated ocean splashdown test at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., Thursday, Aug. 25, 2016. An unmanned test flight is scheduled for 2018 with the first crewed flight is slated for 2023.(AP Photo/Steve Helber)

'That's what we've been doing with these 10 tests.'

In the Apollo era, experiments like this one were commonplace.

Today, the vast majority of NASA's testing is done through digital simulations. However, computer models have some limitations.

'Because we rely so much on computer models now, we need at least some physical tests to anchor those models, to make sure they are accurate,' Corliss said.

With Thursday's success and one final drop in this series scheduled for mid-September, researchers have accumulated a lot of important information.

For each test, they have captured data flowing in through about 535 channels. Each channel represent a sensor calibrated to measure the spacecraft's behavior and condition as well as the experience of its inanimate crew of two heavily instrumented crash test dummies.

The sensors are capable of gathering 10.7 million pieces of high-fidelity data every second.

'We're really ecstatic about the data we're getting and encouraged with how well it's correlating with our computer models,' Corliss said.

The drop tests are the culmination of a three-year collaborative effort among workers at five NASA facilities — Johnson Space Center, Kennedy Space Center, Marshall Space Flight Center, Ames Research Center and Langley — along with help from Orion prime contractor Lockheed Martin.

Thousands of work hours have gone into each test, which is over in a matter of seconds.

Since testing began in April, the project has stockpiled 99 percent of its target data, and covered most of the splashdown scenarios originally mapped out.

A worker corrals a mockup of NASA's Orion spacecraft, a deeps pace vessel that is slated to eventually travel to Mars, after a simulated ocean splashdown test at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., Thursday, Aug. 25, 2016. An unmanned test flight is scheduled for 2018 with the first crewed flight is slated for 2023.(AP Photo/Steve Helber)

Workers prepare a mockup of NASA's Orion spacecraft, a deep space vessel that is slated to eventually travel to Mars, for a simulated ocean splashdown test at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., Thursday, Aug. 25, 2016. An unmanned test flight is scheduled for 2018 with the first crewed flight is slated for 2023.(AP Photo/Steve Helber)

One of that team's biggest challenges was connecting the mock spacecraft — called the Ground Test Article in NASA language — with the heat shield used during Orion's first flight, Exploration Flight Test-1, which took place in 2014.

Leaders realized that matching the heat shield with the mockup could make the tests more accurate and less expensive. But the two elements were not designed to fit together.

Mating them required ingenuity.

First, NASA Marshall removed the remaining thermal protection covering, which was left over from re-entry.

Then, the heat shield was shipped to Langley where extensive integration and sensor installation work took place.

The test flight will send Orion into lunar distant retrograde orbit – a wide orbit around the moon that is farther from Earth than any human-rated spacecraft has ever travelled. It will be be controlled remotely as it flies 43,000 miles (70,000 km) beyond the moon

'There's so much satisfaction watching this test, knowing all the hard work that went into it,' Corliss said. 'This test is complex. The fact that we were able to successfully conduct it, meet our impact conditions, and see it behave the way we expected it to, that's a testament to the whole team.'

The tests at Langley — along with many others across the agency — are leading up to the first integrated flight of the Space Launch System and Orion known as Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1).

For that, Orion will fly atop the Space Launch System, the most powerful rocket in the world.