Goddard Space
Flight Center
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s
A View of Wallops
Bill Wrobel
Director, Wallops Flight
Facility
October 3, 2012
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Wallops Flight Facility Snapshot
• Facility:
• >6000 acres on VA’s Eastern Shore
• Established in 1945
• Assets: >$1.2B
• Mission: Provide capabilities & services to enable science, technology, and education from space
• Suborbital & small orbital “research carriers”
• Mission operations (Research Range, orbital tracking)
• Technology development
• Earth science research
• Educational flight projects
• Economic Impact:
• NASA Budget: ~$218M (FY12)
• NASA Workforce: 270 Civil Servants, ~800 contractors
• Tenant Workforce: ~600 personnel
• National Impact: ~$400M annually, >3100 jobs
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Wallops Mission
3

Sounding Rocket Program
• 20 missions using 8 different vehicle configurations conducted from 4 launch sites during FY12
– 25 missions scheduled for FY13
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Recent Sounding Rocket Mission Highlights
• ATREX – Anomalous Transport
Rocket Experiment
– 5 rockets launched on 80 second intervals
– Study of upper atmosphere jet stream
• IRVE 3 – Inflatable Reentry
Vehicle Experiment
– Technology demonstration of deployed inflatable decelerator for atmospheric entry
5

Balloon Program
• 9 successful missions conducted from 3 launch sites during FY12
– Includes test flight of SF-490 balloon film
– Includes test flight of
Wallops Arc Second Pointer
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New Wallops Aircraft
• C-23 Sherpa – supporting airborne science
• UH-1H Helicopter – providing
Launch Range surveillance & clearance
– 3-year loan from LaRC
• T-34 Mentor – providing chase plane support for Global Hawks
• C-130 Hercules (coming soon) – To provide logistics & possibly science missions
7

Hurricane & Severe Storm Sentinel (HS-3)
• Global Hawk UAS flown from
WFF during September to conduct hurricane studies
– 1 st of 3-year program
• Wallops Global Hawk Operations
Center under construction at
WFF for future campaigns
8

ER-2 Operations At Wallops
• DFRC’s ER-2 at WFF in September to support Minimum Anticipated
Biological Effect Level (MABEL)
• Included flights over eastern & mid-western U.S.
• Instruments included GSFC’s CATS
& CPL
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JEM EF
CREAM Instrument
Structure
CREAM Interface
Location on JEM EF
(EFU2)
ISS CREAM
• WFF managing an SMDsponsored ISS experiment
– U of MD’s Cosmic Ray
Energetics & Mass (CREAM)
• Will launch on a SpaceX
Falcon 9
– Payload readiness date:
9/2014
10

Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD)
• WFF supporting an OCTsponsored program to demonstrate planetary reentry using inflatable structures
• Test article dropped from balloon, and accelerated using rocket
– 4 flights from Hawaii in 2014-5
11

Highlights of Wallops Education in 2012
Wallops Rocket Academy for Teachers and Students (WRATS)
RockOn!
HASP
University , Community College and High School Internships
Take a Child to Work
SEEC
FIRST Robotics
9/19/12
HS3 Workshop
Wallops Balloon Experience for Education (WBEE)
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Major Research Range Activities
• Operationally Responsive Space-3
(ORS-3)
– Minotaur I launch for Operationally
Responsive Space Office
– Launch date in between July-
October 2013
• Lunar Atmosphere & Dust
Experiment Explorer (LADEE)
– Lunar orbiting spacecraft launched on Minotaur V in Aug. 2013
– Instruments managed by GSFC
13

Antares
• Preparations continue for initial flights of Antares from WFF to resupply cargo to the ISS
– Orbital Sciences began vehicle development at WFF in Spring 2011
– Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) turned over the new launch complex to
Orbital last week
• Schedule
– Fueling testing planned during October
– Hot Fire Test expected in November
– 1 st launch possible before end of
December
14

Before
Pad 0A Redevelopment
After
15

Antares Processing in the
Horizontal Integration Facility (HIF)

Antares Rollout and Transporter Erector
Launcher Operations

Cygnus Processing in H-100/Payload
Processing Facility
18

Recent Beach Replenishment
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