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New US manned spacecraft completes first test flight

The Delta IV rocket carrying the Orion lifts off

Photo by NASA

The Orion capsule with parachutes deployed and (inset) floating in the Pacific

Photo by NASA

The Orion capsule after splashdown with recovery ship USS Anchorage in the background

Photo by NASA

8th December 2014

By: Keith Campbell

Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

  

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The prototype of US National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (Nasa’s) latest manned spacecraft, Orion, successfully carried out its first test flight on Friday. The flight lasted about 4.5 hours. The vessel was carried aloft, from the US Air Force’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (AFS) in the US state of Florida, by a Delta IV heavy rocket. Lift-off was at 14:05 South African time, with splashdown in the eastern Pacific Ocean, some 965 km south-west of San Diego in California, at about 18:30 South African time.

As this was the first flight of a new spacecraft, the Orion was unmanned. The purpose of this flight was to test essential technologies, such as the heat shield, the landing parachutes, avionics and computers, as well as the essential spacecraft separation events (spacecraft from Delta IV upper stage and crew module from service module).

During its two-orbit flight, the Orion reached an altitude of nearly 5 800 km. Perhaps surprisingly, this is the furthest distance from Earth achieved by a spacecraft designed for manned missions in more than 40 years.

During its flight the Orion passed twice through the Van Allen radiation belts, being exposed of high levels of radiation and reached speeds of more than 32 000 km/h. It re-entered the atmosphere at a speed of about 30 000 km/h, close to the speed of a spacecraft returning from the Moon. (It was to achieve this speed that Orion’s maximum orbit is so high – the International Space Station orbits at an average height of just 400 km). As a consequence, it endured temperatures of about 2 200 ˚C during re-entry.

After splashdown, the spacecraft was retrieved by the US Navy amphibious ship USS Anchorage. After the ship docks in San Diego, the Orion will be returned to Nasa’s Kennedy Space Centre (SC) in Florida (Cape Canaveral AFS is adjacent to Kennedy SC). It will then be examined and processed and subsequently refurbished for another test flight in 2018.

The Orion is intended as a space exploration vessel and not an Earth-to-orbit transport system. All being well, it will take its crews to asteroids, the Moon and, ultimately, form part of a Mars ship.

As a result, it reverts in design philosophy to the conical space capsule concept employed by Nasa in its Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programmes, instead of the “space plane” concept of the Space Shuttle. That is why the Orion, after re-entry, parachuted to the Earth’s surface and splashed down in the sea.

On exploration missions it will carry a crew of four, but could carry more on short-range, short endurance missions. It is thus significantly larger than Nasa’s previous space capsules.

Nasa administrator Charles Bolden described Orion’s first flight as “a huge step for Nasa and a really critical part of our work to pioneer deep space on our journey to Mars. The teams did a tremendous job putting the Orion through its paces in the real environment it will endure as we push the boundary of human exploration in the coming years.”

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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