Pulaski Times

Talk about a red-letter month for aviation.

December, of course, marks the founding of Civil Air Patrol. The birth of powered flight occurred Dec. 17, 1903, on a frigid windswept North Carolina dune thanks to the Wright brothers. Fifty years ago marked the successful end of America’s first lunar landing program with the Apollo 17 mission.

And this Dec. 11 featured another milestone—the successful conclusion of an unmanned soup-to-nuts test flight, the inaugural mission for the Artemis program.

The unmanned flight is the first page of a new chapter in lunar exploration. Artemis is intended not only to allow humans to live on the moon but also to serve as a way station on the way to Mars.

And a CAP alumnus, Sean Fuller, is the public face of the Artemis effort.

A former cadet and senior member in the Missouri, Florida, and Texas wings, Fuller is the Gateway program international partner manager for Artemis, an international effort by the U.S., Canada, Japan, and the European Space Agency and other international public and private partners.

The December mission was the inaugural flight of the 70-metric-ton SLS rocket and the Orion spacecraft. The rocket produces 8.8 million pounds of thrust, making it the most powerful ever built.

A full test of the system — the SLS and Orion — was the heart of the mission. The Orion spacecraft actually journeyed beyond the moon in a “shakedown cruise,” Fuller said, all in preparation for a manned effort on the next flight.

“We sent (Orion) around and actually beyond the moon. It was testing its power production system, its thermal control system, the computers on it, the thrusters, the guidance and navigation systems in it to control the spacecraft. … We wanted to test out all those systems before we put a crew on it.”

While all tests were critical, consider the heat shield on the spacecraft. Orion re-enters the earth’s atmosphere at 25,000 mph, about 7,500 mph faster than when crews from the International Space Station return home, Fuller said.

And the test flight’s results?

“Overall, it performed just phenomenally,” Fuller said. “On a test flight you kind of expect to have issues and things creep up when you fly it. When you go from ground design and analysis testing to actually putting it up in the air and in space, you kind of expect that.

“But it was a very, very smooth flight — very few hiccups, if you will. We got to test more than we originally planned.”

Original source can be found  here.