Friday, February 19, 2010
Contact: Madge Gibson
news@utsi.edu
John Muratore, professor in Aviation Systems at the University of
Tennessee Space Institute, was a part of a feature article in the
Air & Space Smithsonian Magazine for March 2010.
Muratore, a former NASA employee, was the program manager for the
X-38-V132 project, based at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston,
Texas during the period 1998-2002. Flight Test Engineer for the X-38
was future astronaut, Michael E. Fossum.
Created as an alternative and emergency means of bringing up to
seven International Space station (ISS) crewmembers back to earth,
the X-38 was designed to fit in the payload bay of the shuttle. The
X-38 would have served as a lifeboat in the event the station had to
be evacuated or it would have served as an ambulance in case someone
was gravely injured on the station. The battery system would last
approximately nine hours and be used for power and life support.
The CRV had a parafoil parachute which deployed in four stages to
slow and stabilize the vehicle for a safer landing.
As a partner in the X-38 project, the European Space Agency was
looking at modifying the shape of the CRV into a crew transfer
vehicle to fly people up to and back from the space station.
The project was within eighteen months and $50 million of being
launched into space on its first test flight when NASA cancelled the
funding. The program had performed 8 atmospheric tests of the
vehicle, dropping from the wing of a NASA’s B-52 at the Dryden
Flight Research Center.
In October 2009, the X-38 V-132 Crew Recovery Vehicle (CRV) was sent
to the Strategic Air and Space Museum in Ashland, Nebraska, on
permanent loan. It was welcomed by a high school band, a mayor, and
a lieutenant governor.
Muratore says “Our plan was to derive a version to put on [the
European launcher] Ariane 5 – that’s why we modified the shape. We’d
have had an alternative access to the station.”
Mr. Muratore said that “sooner or later, we’re going to have to
build another rescue vehicle…especially as space evolves more toward
commercial operations, there’s going to be a need for rescue.”
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