evements
Working on the Moon
Because the Moon has no atmosphere, extreme temperatures, and fine gray, corrosive soil, working and living there holds new challenges. To prepare for these challenges, NASA experts are determining what it may take to build a base camp on the lunar surface.
Image to right: Langley has fabricated space hardware for testing the launch abort system. Credit: NASA
Langley's team of experts is performing experiments to evaluate such technologies as self-healing materials, radiation protection, and damage tolerance for a planetary surface habitat and airlock unit. Testing of this lunar base camp will help researchers determine the best materials and designs to use to construct future inflatable lunar habitats.
Guiding a New Constellation
With more than 2.5 times the interior volume of its early Apollo predecessors, the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) called Orion will carry NASA astronauts back to the Moon and in the future to Mars. This next generation spacecraft will bring the Vision for Space Exploration to life.
To permit Orion's four to six-member crew to safely escape from the Launch Vehicle, Langley's expertise will be used to design, develop, test, and evaluate the CEV Launch Abort System.
Langley has completed the design and fabrication of a space capsule mock-up that will be used in the first flight test of the launch abort system, presently set for late 2008. To help propel NASA's return to the Moon in the future, the Center will characterize the aerodynamics of the Ares I and V launch vehicles from the analysis phase to the recovery phase.
Langley scientists are gaining new insight about how clouds and airborne particles effect Earth's weather, climate, and air quality with the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO).
Image to right: CALIPSO makes continuous readings of earth’s atmosphere. Credit: NASA
Since mid-June 2006, CALIPSO along with other earth-observing satellites, has collected data that will help improve scientific models and provide a better understanding of the human impact of the atmosphere. CALIPSO data are available via Langley's Atmospheric Sciences Data Center.
CALIPSO is collaboration between NASA and the French Space Agency, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales.
Exposing Materials to Space
Space is a harsh environment containing ultraviolet radiation and atomic oxygen. These extreme conditions can have damaging effects on spacecraft materials.
The Material International Space Station Experiment (MISSE) managed by Langley has tested hundreds of material samples engineered to better understand the Sun's radiation, extreme temperatures and other elements.
In 2008, two suitcase sized, Passive Experiment Cases containing various materials from spacecraft coatings to solar cell technologies will be mounted to the International Space Station (ISS), and exposed to Space.
After orbiting 220 miles above the Earth, NASA scientists in 2007 began examining how the retrieved materials endured the starkness of space to improve materials used for future space missions as well as consumer products.
New Airplane Shape Takes to the Skies
A remotely piloted prototype that was tested at NASA Langley could be the shape of airplanes to come.
Image to right: The X-48B scale model being tested in the Langley Full-Scale Wind Tunnel. Credit: NASA
The X-48B Blended Wing Body (BWB) looks more like a flying wing than a traditional tube and wing aircraft.
Engineers tested the eight and a half percent scale model in the Langley Full Scale Tunnel, before it started flight tests at the Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.
The X-48B is part of a joint research effort between NASA, Boeing and the Air Force Research Laboratory. Langley engineers are studying advanced blended wing body designs, because they offer better fuel efficiency and payload capacity and produce less noise.
Langley Astronaut Delivers Columbus Laboratory to the International Space Station
Former Langley researcher Leland Melvin took his structures and materials expertise to