For the first time since Apollo 17 returned from the moon in 1972, NASA is scheduled to loft an astronaut capsule on Thursday to soar beyond low Earth orbit.
No one will be aboard this flight test of the new capsule, Orion, but NASA hopes it is the first step toward human exploration of the solar system, including an eventual landing on Mars. Orion's first manned mission is planned for the early 2020s.
'Thursday is the beginning of that journey,' Mark Geyer, Orion's program manager, said at a news conference on Tuesday.
Orion, which looks like a larger version of the cone-shaped Apollo capsule, is sitting atop a Delta IV Heavy rocket at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Liftoff is scheduled for 7:05 a.m. Thursday, minutes after sunrise. In case of bad weather, the launching can be pushed back by up to two hours and 39 minutes.
The rocket's second stage should push the 11-foot-long Orion into an elliptical orbit that reaches 3,600 miles above the Earth 's surface on its second orbit. (By contrast, the International Space Station is about 250 miles from Earth.)
Orion will then re-enter the Earth's atmosphere at 20,000 miles per hour, close to the speeds of a capsule returning from the moon, and temperatures on its heat shield will approach 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
At the end of the four-and-a-half-hour flight, it will splash down in the Pacific Ocean, about 600 miles off the coast of Baja California, and will be pulled from the water by an amphibious Navy ship, the Anchorage. The capsule will then be trucked back to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for closer examination.
The flight, estimated to cost $375 million, will provide a full-scale test of the performance of Orion's parachutes, heat shield and other systems, with 1,200 sensors recording data.
'We expect it to go fine, but you really have to fly it to test it out,' Mr. Geyer said.
While the capsule will not be carrying any people, it will be taking mementos and artifacts. They include a small sample of lunar soil, part of a Tyrannosaurus rex fossil and several artistic works, like poems by Maya Angelou and a recording of the Mars movement from Gustav Holst's 'The Planets.'
Also aboard will be some items from 'Sesame Street': Cookie Monster's cookie, Ernie's rubber ducky and Grover's cape, part of a collaboration between NASA and the children's television program to promote science and math education.
After the flight test, NASA's progress for future astronaut missions will be slow, hemmed in by tight federal budgets and competing visions of the agency's future. Orion's next flight, also without people aboard, is not expected until 2018, and the first ride for astronauts would not occur until at least 2021.
'We feel really fortunate to be in the budget plan, a bipartisan agreement on the budget plan, and our job is to execute to that plan,' Mr. Geyer said. 'Yeah, I wish we could go faster, but I think this is a good plan.'
The next destination is also unclear. NASA is pursuing the idea of capturing a small asteroid and taking it to the neighborhood of the moon, and astronauts would then fly in Orion to the asteroid to take a look. NASA officials contend that this ' asteroid redirect ' mission would be within its budget and would develop technologies necessary for the eventual trip to Mars.
Some skeptics have questioned whether Orion, originally part of a program started under President George W. Bush to send astronauts back to the moon, is even necessary, or a waste of billions of dollars.
The Obama administration canceled Orion and the entire moon program as too expensive and too far behind schedule. But many members of Congress disagreed, and NASA revived a stripped-down version of Orion to be used as a lifeboat for the International Space Station, then resumed a design very close to what had been canceled.
NASA also started work on a heavy-lift rocket known as the Space Launch System that will carry Orion on future launchings. Together, the rocket and the capsule are estimated to cost $19 billion to $22 billion.
Some House Republicans have pushed to revive plans to return to the moon, but have not proposed funds to build a lander.
Meanwhile, NASA is financing the development of two other capsules, built by Boeing and the Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, better known as SpaceX, for taking astronauts to and from the space station beginning in 2017, part of what the space agency calls its commercial crew program.
'Orion won't survive regular commercial crew flight,' James A. M. Muncy, a space policy consultant who advocates a more entrepreneurial approach to human spaceflight, wrote in an email interview.
Boeing officials have maintained that their capsule is designed only for taking people to low Earth orbit, but Elon Musk, the chief executive of SpaceX, has in the past promoted his Dragon capsule, developed at a much lower cost than Orion, as a possible replacement for Orion for trips to deep space.
After the first unmanned Dragon test flight in 2010, Mr. Musk said he hoped NASA would at least consider the possibility. 'Dragon has arguably more capability than Orion,' he said then. 'Basically, anything Orion can do, Dragon can do.'
But officials at NASA and Lockheed Martin, the builder of Orion, say it is specifically designed for longer missions, up to 21 days for four astronauts.
The spacecraft also needs to carry several times as much oxygen, food and water as on a trip to low Earth orbit and provide practical amenities for the astronauts. 'It has a bathroom,' Josh B. Hopkins, the space exploration architect at Lockheed Martin, said in an interview.
Orion could take part in an eventual monthslong trip to Mars as part of a larger spacecraft that included more living space for the astronauts.
Entities 0 Name: Orion Count: 19 1 Name: NASA Count: 11 2 Name: Earth Count: 6 3 Name: moon Count: 5 4 Name: Boeing Count: 2 5 Name: Florida Count: 2 6 Name: SpaceX Count: 2 7 Name: Lockheed Martin Count: 2 8 Name: Geyer Count: 2 9 Name: Ernie Count: 1 10 Name: Musk Count: 1 11 Name: Elon Musk Count: 1 12 Name: Gustav Holst Count: 1 13 Name: Congress Count: 1 14 Name: Maya Angelou Count: 1 15 Name: Baja California Count: 1 16 Name: Delta IV Heavy Count: 1 17 Name: Obama Count: 1 18 Name: Pacific Ocean Count: 1 19 Name: Anchorage Count: 1 20 Name: Dragon Count: 1 21 Name: Mark Geyer Count: 1 22 Name: Grover Count: 1 23 Name: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Count: 1 24 Name: Space Exploration Technologies Corporation Count: 1 25 Name: George W. Bush Count: 1 26 Name: James A. M. Muncy Count: 1 27 Name: Navy Count: 1 28 Name: Josh B. Hopkins Count: 1 Related 0 Url: http://ift.tt/1vCe1Vb Title: NASA's Orion capsule set for critical test flight Description: CAPE CANAVERAL - Threatened with cancellation four years ago, NASA's Orion capsule survived the political heat. This week, NASA will see if the spacecraft it is designing to one day fly astronauts to Mars can handle a searing, 20,000-mph re-entry through Earth's atmosphere during its first test flight. At 7:05 a.m.
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