Irvin Aerospace, the world's first parachute engineering, design and manufacturing company founded in 1919, has been awarded a 5-year IDIQ contract to develop an advanced space capsule airbag landing attenuation system for NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA. For the NASA Langley project, Irvin will utilize its new state-of-the-art advanced high speed computer to design and model the capsule airbags while simulating dynamic CEV (Crew Exploration Vehicle) landings under various loads and conditions. The Irvin computer system uses sophisticated Fluid Structure Interaction (FSI) modeling to test and analyze each airbag design concept for precision performance and to reduce development time to meet the CEV project schedule.

"We've designed and produced deceleration and landing systems for a variety of space programs and missions to include the Space Shuttle, Pioneer Venus, Surveyor, and Huygens spacecrafts, the SRB (Solid Rocket Booster) as well as airbags and parachutes for Kistler," said Tony Taylor, Technical Director, Space Market. "Since 2001, Irvin has been focused on the space market working on a series of programs for manned spacecraft."

The NASA contract provides options for manufacture, development, and testing at the Langley facility in Hampton, Virginia.

About Irvin Aerospace

Irvin Aerospace is a world leader in the design, development, and manufacture of best-of-class parachutes for space and air vehicle recovery systems, deceleration systems for high-performance aircraft, military, personnel, and cargo parachute systems as well as ordnance flare chutes, airbags, and weapons delivery systems. Irvin's R&D group also designs a wide variety of deceleration systems for custom applications. Irvin Aerospace has more than 85 years of parachute engineering design experience with its U.S. Corporate Headquarters located in Santa Ana, California. As a member of the Airborne Systems Group, Irvin Aerospace and its products can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.irvinaerospace.com