The Max Launch Abort System – Concept, Flight Test, and Evolution

The NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) is an independent engineering analysis and test organization providing support across the range of NASA programs. In 2007 NASA was developing the launch escape system for the Orion spacecraft that was evolved from the traditional tower-configuration escape systems used for the historic Mercury and Apollo spacecraft. The NESC was tasked, as a programmatic risk-reduction effort, to develop and flight test an alternative to the Orion baseline escape-system concept. This project became known as the Max Launch Abort System (MLAS), named in honor of Maxime Faget, the developer of the original Mercury escape system. Over the course of approximately 2 years, the NESC performed conceptual and tradeoff analyses, designed and built full-scale flight test hardware, and conducted a successful flight test demonstration in July 2009. Since the flight test, the NESC has continued to further develop and refine the MLAS concept.