Textron Holds Open House For Orion Heat Shield

Back in March, we reported that a "Super Guppy" airplane had touched down at Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford carrying a heat shield to be used on the next generation of NASA spacecraft. 

On Wednesday at Textron Defense Systems in Wilmington, members of NASA, Textron employees and Wilmington public officials admired the work completed on the heat shield in the near four months since it landed in Massachusetts.

Mark Geyer, NASA Program Manager for Orion, said the work Textron had done on the heat shield for Orion was impressive, and noted it was one of the most crucial components of the spacecraft. 

"There is no more important piece of Orion than this heat shield, and there are few on Orion that are more complicated or more difficult to build," Geyer said. "It's systems like this that protect the crew and get them back to earth safely."

Jeff Picard, Senior Vice President of Program Execution for Textron, said the heat shield is undoubtedly the most crucial part of the spacecraft to astronauts, as it's what protects them during reentry. 

"When you're traveling at 25,000 mph in 5,000 degree heat, I think you you would agree what you are most interested in is who made that heat shield," Picard said. 

Textron is applying a material called Avcoat to the heat shield built by Lockheed Martin that will wear away at a controlled rate when exposed to heat during reentry of the spacecraft, according to Mike Kieran, Vice President of Integrated Supply Chain at Textron.

The Avcoat us installed into a honeycomb core on the heat shield to provide structural reinforcement and prevent cracking, according to Kieran.

The heat shield will be tested sometime in 2014 during Orion's Exploration Test Flight.

Charlie Lundquist, Crew and Service Module Manager for Orion at NASA, said the spacecraft will go around earth two times in 90 minutes during the test flight. 

Col. Rex Walheim, NASA astronaut, said he believes the Orion program will be an opportunity to unite Americans much as the launching of the first Apollo craft did.

"Orion can take human farther than they've ever gone before," Walheim said. "This vehicle will be the core stage of getting us off this planet and getting us to Mars."

Check out the attached video to hear what Wilmington Selectmen Chairman Michael McCoy had to say at Wednesday's presentation.