Doing Business with Wallops.pdf

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Doing Business with NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility www.nasa.gov/wallops Keith Thompson, Wallops Advanced Projects Office | 757-824-1680

WALLOPS RANGE

The Wallops Range supports many of the mission activities around WFF and abroad.

Project managers utlize the support of range services to provide a broad array of technical and instrumentation services, such as radar, optical tracking, telemetry, meteorological, command and control, surveillance and recovery, financial analysis and engineering services to support scientific research and technology development.

NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) in Virginia provides agile, low-cost flight and launch range ser-vices to meet government and commercial sector needs for accessing flight regimes worldwide from the Earth’s surface to the moon and beyond. As a multi-user facility with operational launch range, spaceport, and airfield assets, Wallops is well-positioned to meet ongoing and emerging needs in the science, aerospace, defense, and commercial industries.

WALLOPS MOBILE ASSETS

Wallops has semi-permanent downrange instrumentation as well as mobile instrumentation to include radar, telemetry, command/control, and data systems that can be transported to offsite and remote locations. Campaigns have been conducted from the semi-permanent locations in Bermuda and North Carolina, as well as from the Arctic and Antarctic regions, South America, Africa, Europe, Australia and even at sea, with our mobile systems. WFF personnel have extensive experience in planning and conducting downrange support and mobile campaigns, developing equipment and systems to support these operations. Downrange and mobile systems include the following: C-band radar, meteorology, optical tracking, orbital tracking, flight termination, telemetry, timing, surveillance, and recovery.

MID-ATLANTIC

REGIONAL SPACEPORT

Virginia’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops supports two launch facilities, one medium-lift liquid-fueled pad and a medium-lift solid propellant pad. Additionally, the spaceport is slated to add a venture-class launch pad by the end of 2019.

In general, launch azimuths between 90° and 160° can be achieved, depending on impact ranges. For most orbital vehicles, this translates into orbital inclinations between 38° and approximately 60°. Trajectory options outside of these launch azimuths, including polar and sun-synchronous orbits, can be achieved by in-flight azimuth maneuvers.

Support infrastructure includes on-site liquid oxygen and RP-1 along with access to other commodities. Through agreements with NASA, additional services available include vehicle and payload processing integration facilities, support instrumentation, and emergency facilities.

SUBORBITAL FLIGHT PLATFORMS

Wallops’ suborbital flight vehicles—suborbital sounding rockets, heavy-lift balloons, and an array of research aircraft — are vital to supporting science, technology development, and education missions.

Additionally, a key hallmark of the suborbital program is training the next generation of scientists and engineers, as well as raising the technology readiness level of various instruments.

Suborbital rockets fly parabolic trajectories providing customers from 5-20 minutes of exposure in space. These rockets can carry payloads as heavy as 1,500 pounds to altitudes as high as 1,000 miles. High-altitude balloons are capable of lifting suspended payloads up to 8,000 pounds and can reach altitudes as high as 160,000 feet.

The Aircraft Office provides the operation, maintenance, engineering, airworthiness, and mission support of assigned aircraft, as well as planning and conducting operational missions. Agile, highly configurable flight platforms include the P-3, C-130, C-23, UH-1, and B-200.

The facility has three runways on the main base: Runway 10-28 (8,005 feet); Runway 4-22 (8,750 feet, with the ability to expand to 10,250 feet); and Runway 17-35 (4,808 feet). The runways can also support air launch vehicle systems. In additional to the NASA airfield, Virginia Space operates a 3,000-foot-long, 75-foot-wide unmanned aerial systems runway on North Wallops Island.