The WB-57F Ascent Video Experiment  (WAVE) sensor is readied for a test flight. Carried on the nose of a NASA hight-altitude WB-57F aircraft, the sensor features an 11-inch reflecting telescope. The WAVE project, which included key inputs from The Aerospace Corporation on the system's design and mission planning, will collect data to evaluate the usefulness of launch and reentry imagery obtained from high-definition video cameras carried by the aircraft. Imagery of the New Horizons launch on Jan. 19 was captured by the WAVE sensor. Photo courtesy of NASA.

Technical Efforts Reach Far Beyond Earth with New Horizons Mission

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (1/19/06) -- The Aerospace Corporation's technical reach is often far out, but never three billion miles from Earth as is the case with the New Horizons spacecraft, now on its journey to the Kuiper Belt, Pluto, and beyond.

Since 2003 Aerospace has been involved in a number of technical areas related to NASA missions, including the Jan. 19 launch of the New Horizons spacecraft.

New Horizons is the first mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program of medium-class spacecraft exploration projects. The New Frontiers Program provides opportunities to conduct several medium-class missions to study the solar system. New Horizons is on a trajectory that will take it more than three billion miles toward its target. The spacecraft will travel past Jupiter for a gravity assist and science studies in February 2007, and conduct the first close-up, in-depth study of Pluto and its moons in the summer of 2015.

As part of a potential extended mission, the spacecraft would then examine one or more additional objects in the Kuiper Belt, the region of icy, rocky bodies (including Pluto) far beyond Neptune’s orbit.

In 2003, Aerospace participated in the satellite’s critical design review at the Applied Physics Laboratory, which manages the mission for NASA.

Later that year, NASA’s Independent Program Assessment Office requested an Aerospace analysis of the production schedule for the spacecraft’s radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) that power the spacecraft.

Aerospace also supports NASA’s Safety and Mission Assurance Directorate (S&MA) at Kennedy Space Center, which provides independent mission readiness assessments for all NASA expendable launches.

Dr. Ed Ruth, Space Launch Projects, Launch Systems Division, leads the Aerospace effort, providing launch vehicle technical consultation and evaluation. Ruth and the Aerospace team assisted S&MA in assessing the risks associated with launch vehicle hardware concerns and helped S&MA formulate their own independent position on mission risks, which they presented to the NASA Flight Board.

In another mission support area, Aerospace was involved in the design and planning for NASA’s experimental WB-57F Ascent Video Experiment, or WAVE, project—an effort to evaluate the usefulness of launch and reentry imagery obtained from high-definition video cameras and sensors carried in the noses of high-altitude WB-57F aircraft. Dr. Marty Ross, Space Launch Projects, Launch Systems Division, provides technical management of the WAVE project, while the corporation’s Flight Mechanics Department is supporting WAVE mission design and planning.

Aerospace coordinated the WAVE New Horizons mission from the Range Operations Control Center during the Jan. 18 launch aboard an Atlas V. WAVE provided views of the Atlas V that could not be obtained from ground cameras. From an altitude of 50,000 feet and 13 miles south of the launch site, the WAVE system operator in the WB-57F cockpit tracked and observed the Atlas V from liftoff through payload fairing separation and verified these events in real-time for the NASA Contingency Coordination (NCC) team.

A secondary WAVE objective—in case of a launch failure—was to support NCC efforts to recover the spacecraft’s RTGs by tracking debris and reporting the coordinates of their splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean.

Analysis of the Atlas V video will be used to characterize and improve sensor system performance in preparation for the next WAVE mission.

In 2005, the U.S. Senate directed NASA to study the technical feasibility, cost, and schedule of a follow-on mission to New Horizons. Aerospace contributed to the NASA team, providing systems engineering, cost and systems modeling expertise, as well as schedule analyses for various mission concepts. Aerospace also performed a resource assessment using the company’s risk-assessment tool, Complexity Based Risk Assessment, and various launch vehicle performance assessments. The study report was presented to the associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in April 2005. NASA forwarded the report to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The Aerospace Corporation, with headquarters in El Segundo, Calif., is an independent, nonprofit company that provides objective technical analyses and assessments for national security space programs and selected civil and commercial space programs in the national interest.