Rescue specialists prepare for missions

At sea off Marine Corps Base Hawaii, the six Air Force rescue specialists, all with parachutes, went out the back of a C-17 cargo jet along with an already inflated rubber boat on its own chute, aiming for an orange marker 3,000 feet below.

The equipment test harked back to a mission of old — Apollo astronaut recoveries in the Pacific — and was a harbinger of the future: next-generation Orion spaceflights to asteroids and Mars.

With NASA aiming for an unmanned Exploration Mission 1 with Orion in late 2018 and a manned flight in 2021, 42 members of the New York Air National Guard were in Hawaii for a joint NASA/ Defense Department mission to evaluate recovery techniques in ocean splashdowns of the future.

The Air Guard personnel with the 106th Rescue Wing and its 103rd Rescue Squadron were mainly testing what is nicknamed a “front porch” for astronauts — an inflatable life raft-type platform that attaches to the floating spacecraft.

“For us this trip and this work was historic,” said Capt. Michael O’Hagan, a public affairs officer with the New York Air Guard. “It really was, because the 106th Rescue Wing … is no stranger to working with NASA. We worked extensively with NASA in the past on the shuttle missions, and this is our first opportunity to kind of work with them again on this new phase of human spaceflight.”

The 106th provided rescue support at Patrick Air Force Base near the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for 109 space shuttle missions, and was tasked with rescuing astronauts who would have to abandon their spacecraft in a launch emergency, the New York Air Guard said.

The team of 42 was made up of pararescuemen — highly-trained specialists also known as “PJs” — combat rescue officers, “survival, evasion, resistance and escape” specialists and other airmen. The Hawaii Air National Guard’s 204th Airlift Squadron provided the C-17 for the Oahu training, which ran from Feb. 27 through the first half of this week.

The New York Air Guard said it will continue to work with NASA, Air Force test and evaluation experts and the Defense Department’s Human Spaceflight Support Office in developing techniques for airdropping gear needed to recover Orion crews.

The Apollo 17 spacecraft, returning from the final manned mission to the moon, splashed down Dec. 19, 1972, 350 nautical miles southeast of American Samoa with astronauts Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans and Harrison Schmitt.

An Orion spacecraft made a two-orbit, 4-1/2-hour test flight in 2014, reaching an altitude of 3,604 miles above Earth before splashing down off the coast of San Diego. The spacecraft will also make a Pacific landing off San Diego for the Exploration Mission 1 flight. NASA said the spacecraft will travel thousands of miles beyond the moon over three weeks.

Orion will launch atop the Space Launch System. Its shape is similar to that of the Apollo capsule, but it is bigger and will be able to carry up to six astronauts, according to NASA.

The Trump administration asked NASA to look at the possibility of adding astronauts to the EM-1 flight. The space agency said Feb. 24 it would initiate an assessment of the technical feasibility, risks, benefits, additional work required, resources needed and impact to schedules by adding a crew to the mission.

Navy divers used a rigid- hull Zodiac boat to practice securing a test version mock-up of the Orion crew module during Underway Recovery Test 5 off the coast of California on Oct. 27. For the Hawaii testing no capsule replica was used. O’Hagan said an orange marker was used, and a jet ski circled the spot to create a bull’s-eye target ring for the jumpers.

The uninflated “front porch” was loaded into the rubber boat with other equipment onboard the C-17 and then inflated once in the water, O’Hagan said, adding that the pararescuers were able to practice the insertion multiple times.

“This is really crawl, walk, run type of work,” O’Hagan said. “This is the very earliest stages in our involvement.” He said he expects the unit to be back out in Hawaii again in the future for additional equipment testing.

Beyond that it was a “big Hawaii Air National Guard and New York Air National Guard” opportunity to cooperate, “forging that great relationship and getting some great work done together,” O’Hagan said.