All language subtitles for The.New.Frontier.S02E04.Shore.to.Shore.1080p.NF.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.x264-NTb_track3_[eng]

Our seafaring nature has
translated well to the space age,

sailing out into the unknown in
search of riches of one kind or another.

While Europe and Asia continue
their interest in the resource-rich Moon,

the United States and NASA have set
their sights on nothing less

than manned missions to Mars.

Can they manage to go shore to shore

on the most dangerous
of unknown seas, deep space?

With low Earth orbit harnessed,
it is time to look further afield.

To build a spacecraft and rocket
system to reach Mars

is a mammoth undertaking,

but if successful,
it will return the United States to the top
of the space achievement ladder.

The first requirement:

a space capsule able to carry six
astronauts for a long period of time

and return them safely to Earth.

Orion is its name and it has flown
once already in a shakedown.

The next flight will be
an unmanned test mission past the moon,

followed by a third manned mission.

The components for the vehicle are
developed around the country,

tested and checked,
then passed on for assembly.

The minutest bolt and circuit is
designed, tested, redesigned

and tested again.

Slowly the systems come together,

with the aid of some
breakthrough technology,

particularly in manufacturing methods,
new materials and processes.

The first thing to notice is
that NASA have gone back

to the classic conic shape like Apollo,
the safest design yet devised.

Avionics, control systems,
computer software and a glass cockpit,

all state of the art.

...and the concept was to go
with a glass cockpit

and what that means is
that the instruments are all images

on a computer screen.

They are all on glass,
so rather than flipping a physical switch,

the crew brings up a computer screen
and flips a virtual switch,

a little icon of a switch
or icon of a valve,

and with the exception of seven panels
right around the computer screens,

which have about 60 switches,

that is all of the cockpit of Orion
happens on the glass.

One big benefit is the weight savings

because you don't have to have
a physical switch.

And having a physical switch,

not only
is there the weight of the switch,

but you also have the weight of the wire
to the switch,

and you have to have the weight
of circuitry that takes that wire

and feeds it into the vehicle computers.

Because of Orion's size,
its all-important heat shield

is the largest one ever made,

and new processes were required
to manufacture it.

The Orion heat shield has
got to be able to withstand landing loads

on the order of 300
to 400 thousand pounds.

Because we're returning potentially
from the Moon or beyond

and the flight duration from the time
in which you commit to a return

to the time you actually land,

the weather conditions on Earth
can be substantially different

or difficult to predict.

And so the Orion spacecraft has to be able
to land in the ocean

in a wide range of sea conditions,

wave height, wave slope angle
and horizontal winds.

That is what's driven us to a skin
stringer architecture that utilizes

a thick laminate composite skin
bolted to a titanium sub-structure.

We bond on an ablator, called the Avcoat.

The ablator is the thermal protection part
of the heat shield.

The very outside of the ablator
actually gets hot enough

that it decomposes,
and that's the ablation part of it,

as opposed to an insulator
like a shuttle tile.

Then come the ancillary
structures and equipment

that will ride with the capsule.

The escape tower, designed and tested,

will pull the capsule away
from the main rocket

in the case of an emergency.

Adaptor separation
from the rocket's upper stage.

Parachute deployment.

The connecting adaptor to the EMS.

The EMS is the service module
attached to the Orion in flight,

supplying oxygen,
water, power and heating.

Built by ESA, it is based
on their very successful ATV program

which delivered supplies to the ISS.

It'll also provide the main engine thrust
for deep space maneuvering.

We have, in particular,
a very, very tight schedule in front of us

so everybody's working under high pressure
to meet the dates

and this requires
a very, very close collaboration.

I see a very motivated team,
and so far, as an agency,

we are quite happy with the performance
of the European industry.

The US Navy is tasked with
retrieving the capsule from the ocean.

At first they train in the pool,
then calm waters,

then the Pacific,
and finally the real thing.

Experts continue to evolve
the process and training

in readiness for the day when
a manned flight returns from deep space.

This is the RS-25,
the Ferrari of liquid rocket engines

and the main engine
from the Space Shuttle program.

Economically re-purposed
for the Space Launch System,

four of these engines
will power the main stage of the rocket.

The main solid rocket boosters
of the shuttle program

also have a renewed life
in the SLS.

With another two segments added,

the boosters will thrust
for over two minutes.

This project has been
a real fun effort in trying to take a heritage booster

that had many, many years
of reliability and great performance and evolve it
into something bigger and better.

When we first undertook this design

and qualification
for the new booster,

part of the mission
was to make the booster

more affordable and more modern

and, of course, it had to be completely
redesigned for a new mission.

It's a larger booster

and the mission profile
is sufficiently different

to where pretty much everything
on the inside of the booster is different.

There's well over a thousand
individual processes.

Working with our customer,
we were able to identify

several hundred areas of improvement.

We've got totally new avionics
on this vehicle

versus what we had on Shuttle.

It's state of the art.

Bigger and more powerful
than any previous launch system,

the SLS has been under development
for some time.

Designing it is one thing,
building it another.

In new or refurbished factories
and assembly shops,

the body of the largest rocket ever to fly
is being constructed one piece at a time.

The massive hydrogen tank takes shape.

The smaller oxygen tank soon follows.

The interim stage for the manned
flight is another hydrogen-oxygen motor

supplied by cryo tanks
fabricated with new technologies.

So to design and manufacture
this tank, we used new materials.

We processed the tank
by automatic fiber placement.

The benefit of that is
we can lay down the material quickly,

which provides us a low cost operation
and a very lightweight tank.

Well, we've worked on this program
for 29 months and when we started,

we'd never built a tank of this size
by the methods that we did.

We did automated fiber placement
and fluted core,

just developing the robotic
fiber placement equipment

in a way to make the skirt in one piece
was a large challenge.

Each exacting piece
is fabricated,

test articles are run
through the mill,

vibration tests, vacuum tests,
acoustic tests, stress tests.

Nothing is left to chance.

New technology and new materials
for a new generation of space exploration.

For this test, there were
several things that we looked at.

This was the first time we used
those thermal knives

to start the deployment sequence.

And that allowed cuts and tethers,

but then allowed the solar array
to deploy.

We wanted to test the locking mechanisms
to ensure that it locked properly in space

because anything that could possibly go
wrong, we wanted to see tested down here,

so we can ensure, you know,
a successful flight.

It's all about technology.

If you don't develop technologies
for the future,

you won't go where you want to go.

So composites will decrease
the weight of the tanks.

It'll increase the payload performance
of the launch vehicle.

It'll give us-- it basically enables
things that we don't have today.

Soon the mighty rocket
will lift human beings up further

than ever before.

The flight to Mars will be a long one,
too long for a crew to sit in a capsule.

A habitat and supplies will also
be lifted to orbit and assembled.

Several companies have been selected
by NASA to carry out studies

for a suitable system to do the job.

A bit of competition
is always good for invention.

Bigelow Aerospace with its
Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM,

currently being tested on the ISS,

will develop and test a prototype
of XBASE,

a 330 cubic meter expandable habitat.

Boeing of Houston is developing
a modular habitat system

that leverages more than 15 years
experience in designing, developing,

assembling on-orbit,

and safely operating
the International Space Station.

Lockheed Martin will refurbish
a multi-purpose logistics module

into a full-scale habitat prototype
that will include integrated avionics

and ECLSS.

Orbital ATK will mature
the mission architecture and design

of their initial cislunar habitat concept,

based on the Cygnus spacecraft
that now supplies the ISS.

Sierra Nevada Corporation's
Space Systems will study and refine

a flexible architecture and concept
of operations

for a deep space habitat
that draws on the lessons

of three to four commercial launches to
construct a modular long-duration habitat.

NanoRacks
in conjunction with its partners,

Space Systems Loral
and the United Launch Alliance,

referred to collectively
as the Ixion Team,

will conduct a comprehensive
feasibility study

regarding the conversion of an existing
launch vehicle's upper stage,

or propellant segment,

into a pressurized habitable volume
in space.

So if you're designing
spacecraft to be in the Mars orbit,

then the studies we're doing
on Space Station can be applied

and help us to design more durable
spacecraft for that Martian atmosphere.

MISSE stands for the Materials
International Space Station Experiment.

We do study the durability of polymers
in terms of their mechanical properties

with radiation exposure.

And we hear a lot about the radiation
exposure impact on humans

for flights to, say, Mars,

but polymers and other materials
that are used on spacecraft

can also degrade from radiation
and that's one of the things I study.

The MISSE experiments do take
a bit of time because we do very careful

dehydration measurements of
the samples after they've been in space.

What we've found is
that the Teflon erosion rate

is highly dependent
on the amount of sunlight

and possibly the heating too.

You need to know which of these
environments it's gonna be exposed to

because it'll erode at a different rate,
depending on the environment.

Assembling spacecraft
in orbit

and fueling them for the long journey
to Mars sounds simple enough.

On orbit,
refueling is anything but simple.

NASA have been developing a system for
unmanned refueling for quite some time,

and have a test article onboard the ISS.

We can take
a pick-and-place robot,

put the tool
wherever we need it to be,

and all it needs to do is drive that tool
because the smarts are in the tool.

So, that's what we learned
from working on Hubble is

you put a smart tool
with the astronauts

and accomplish, you know, both things.

You've got smart tools
and astronauts working together.

Now we're putting smart tools with robots
and trying to accomplish

the same type of things we did on Hubble.

Aimed at developing
capabilities for servicing,

even refueling spacecraft on orbit,

RRM is like
doing precise surgery at a distance,

doctor and patient separated by the void
and vacuum of space.

It's tough, but the payoff is huge.

Robotics can do things
that humans can't do

in terms of precision,
in terms of control.

Holding a particular spot for six hours

while engineers on the ground

debate what to do.

We can't ask a human to do that.

The robot is a very stiff,
rigid interface.

It's not forgiving,
like an astronaut's hand,

so we have to take that into account.

When you push on something really hard
with the robot,

you build up really large
contact forces.

When the astronaut pushes on something,
his wrist might give--

you know, he's got his own
internal software compliance running.

But in order to accommodate the robot
so we don't break anything,

we have to build features into the tool,
features into the software,

just getting the robot
to go where you want it to go.

You know, they don't position precisely,
so you have to do things like

build lead-in into the tool.

An astronaut can probably just get it
right on there because he's right there.

So we do have to do things to make them,
you know,

very specific to robotic operation.

We're almost there.

Whoa!

That task successful,
next stop Mars.

The first manned mission to Mars
will probably only orbit the planet,

checking out all the gear and processes,

even launching communication
satellites and finalizing landing sites

in preparation for the next mission,

which will then make the descent
to the surface.

And that has a whole new
set of problems to overcome.

Unlike the moon,
Mars has stronger gravity,

about knot .6 of Earth's,

but it does have an atmosphere
where parachutes can be used,

although the atmosphere is very thin
and not very deep.

Well, it's a funny thing about Mars,

but if you take the average
of the planet,

the average height of everything
in the planet,

it turns out that most of
the north is two kilometers below that

and most of the south
is two kilometers above that.

And it's just, we always land in the north
'cause there's a lot more atmosphere.

If you land in the south,
it's like four kilometers less of air

to come to a stop.

In fact, at the altitude of the mountains
in the south,

the Mars science laboratory
was still supersonic

as it was descending into the crater
it was reaching in the north.

Assuming the need to
pre-position habitats, supplies

and equipment on the surface
prior to humans landing,

NASA and its partners
are looking at several solutions.

One is the HIAD or Hypersonic
Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator.

This is basically a very large
inflatable heat shield,

much larger in area
than the payload,

able to slow the craft
considerably faster than a standard spacecraft heat shield.

Plans are to test the system
on a payload from the ISS,

utilizing a Cygnus resupply spacecraft.

Once lower in the atmosphere,
parachutes will further slow the payload

to an altitude low enough
for rocket engines to take over.

Morpheus and the Xombie flight
systems have matured

over the last few years
and are capable of delivering cargo

to a planet's surface autonomously,

avoiding rough terrain or other obstacles
without human intervention...

...adding yet another building block
to our human effort

to explore the solar system.