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Still photo of a space shuttle block foam impact test on the shuttle’s bipod area at speeds up to 2,255 feet per second was performed at the Air Force’s Arnold Engineering Development Center’s Ballistic Impact Range S-3.


Tennessee playing a role in shuttle Return to Flight

Still photo of a space shuttle block foam impact test on the shuttle’s bipod area at speeds up to 2,255 feet per second was performed at the Air Force’s Arnold Engineering Development Center’s Ballistic Impact Range S-3.

Related Imagery
Peter Montgomery took this photo of the space shuttle Discovery's last flight in February 2011.
Peter Montgomery poses for a photo Feb. 6, 2010, in fron of the space shuttle Endeavour before its launch for mission STS-130.
Tests examining one of the major events in any space shuttle flight – separation of the two spend solid-rocket boosters from the manned orbiter and its external fuel tank – were conducted for NASA. After lifting the shuttle off the launching pad, the boosters would fall back into the sea to be recovered and renovated for use on other shuttle missions. In the AEDC tests, high-pressure air was used to simulate the exhaust of the small rocket motors that will push the booster casing away from the orbiter. Separation under a wide variety of flight conditions was examined in the program. Here a pre-test check of the dual support system that controlled the separation process is monitored by Glenn Rainey, a test facility craftsman for ARO, Inc. (AEDC file photo)
At the time, one matter of interest both to the present and the future space shuttle designers was determining the pressures and temperatures the orbiter and booster would be subjected to through the interaction of their shock waves. A series of tests were conducted to measure temperatures and pressures for comparison with analytical results, After a series of tests using very simple forms to represent a booster paired with an orbiter, data were taken with the hypothetical orbiter-booster combination shown here. The effort was sponsored by the Air Force Flight Dynamics Laboratory and was conducted for Grumman Aircraft by Arnold Research Organization (ARO), Inc., AEDC' s operating contractor at the time. Checking adjustment of the models is test facility craftsman R. G. Rainey. (AEDC file photo)
NASA representative John Warmbrod, left; ARO project engineer R.K. Matthews, center, and Air Force representative to VKF, Maj. R.W. Working, examine the vast amount of data produced in the heat transfer phase of the test programs. Similar amounts were produced in the other phases. (AEDC file photo)
(From left) Aerospace Testing Alliance Outside Machinists Gary Cunningham and R.B. Ray install an External Tank Thermal Protection System foam sample tile prior to injection into Tunnel C which was already running at Mach 4 and 1,440 degrees Fahrenheit. The TPS foam protects the shuttle's ET during ascent. (Photo by David Housch)
Pressure sensitive paint flow visualization data from a three-percent model of the space shuttle tested at the Air Force’s Arnold Engineering Development Center’s long transonic wind tunnel was used to validate computational fluid dynamics data generated by NASA.
Jim Greathouse, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analyst, left to right, Darby Vicker, CFD analyst, and Bob Ess, program manager, all from NASA Johnson Space Center, examine the shuttle model during a model change at in the16-foot transonic wind tunnel at the Air Force’s Arnold Engineering Development Center.
A “blue light” photo of the “full stack” space shuttle model in 16-foot transonic wind tunnel at the Air Force’s Arnold Engineering Development Center.
Machinist Larry Phipps at the Air Force’s Arnold Engineering Development Center loads a foam projectile into an 86-foot-long rectangular barrel used to conduct impact testing for the Space Shuttle Return to Flight program.
A “blue light” photo of the “full-stack” shuttle model in AEDC’s 16-foot transonic wind tunnel during model change in late 2004.