SPACE LIFEBOAT ACES TEST X-38 MODEL CRAFT FLIES ON TARGET FROM 37,500 FEET.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE - The X-38 made a nearly perfect flight test Tuesday, providing more information toward the creation of a lifeboat for the International Space Station and boosting morale in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Released from its B-52 mother ship at an altitude of about 37,500 feet, the X-38 glided for about six minutes and then deployed a mammoth parafoil, a steerable parachute. The aircraft then glided for another six minutes before landing gently on Rogers Dry Lake at 11 a.m.

``It was about as near perfect as a flight can be,'' said Bob Baron, X-38 project manager for NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center. ``It worked very, very well.''

Before the 7,500-square-foot parafoil deployed, a drogue chute slowed the X-38 from 600 to 60 mph. Then, using the parafoil, the unmanned X-38 touched down at 40 mph and stopped within about 360 feet of the ``X'' mark on the lake bed. It boosted workers' spirits to see the success from 37,500 feet high and 10 miles away, Baron said.

Morale had been down after an X-43 was lost June 2 when the rocket booster carrying the unmanned research aircraft had to be destroyed.

NASA is testing technologies for a self-piloting lifeboat that could transport astronauts back to Earth in the event of an emergency. The lifeboat would be piloted by computer with a parafoil for a controlled, soft landing.

The X-38 team is in the middle of flight-testing five X-38 aircraft, each about 80 percent the size of the actual crew-return vehicle or lifeboat. The first X-38, a bare-bones vehicle designated 131 and intended to test the parafoil concept, was first flown in 1998.

Flights of the second X-38, designated 132 and featuring a flight control system, followed.

The first X-38, reshaped to more closely resemble the expected final shape of the crew return vehicle, was the vehicle that was flown Tuesday. That vehicle, dubbed 131R, will make five or six more flights, with the next coming in about eight weeks.

``Each flight test of the X-38 incorporates technologies that have never been used on a human spacecraft - from satellite-based navigation to electromechanical actuators to the giant parafoil,'' said the X-38 crew- return vehicle project manager, John Muratore. ``Every flight gives us invaluable insight into the performance of these technologies during an actual descent and brings us closer to proving them for use in space.''

In February 2003, NASA plans to take the fourth X-38, designated 201, into space aboard a space shuttle. The X-38 will then fly itself back to Earth, a key milestone for the program.

The fifth X-38, 133, will fly after the space flight of 201 and will be used to provide further validation of the systems used on 201.

NASA announced in March that it would defer the construction of the crew return vehicle because of a $1 billion cost overrun on the space station construction.

An option under consideration now is to turn the 201 test craft into an actual space lifeboat, the 201R, smaller and less expensive than the planned one that could hold an entire station crew of seven.

The smaller lifeboat would be able to hold only four astronauts, and a Russian Soyuz spacecraft would be needed for the others if the entire crew had to be evacuated in an emergency.

The concept calls for the 201R to be operational by 2007.

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

(color) An X-38 model for a lifeboat, to serve the International Space Station, leaves a B-52 to being a computer-controlled glide of 37,500 feet to Earth in what project workers called a nearly perfect test Tuesday at Edwards Air Force Base.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration