NASA Orion Test Flight Kennedy - The test flight for NASA's quest to send astronauts out into the solar system will finally start this week. The new NASA Orion test flight Kennedy will be taking place with two laps around the Earth, according to Phys.org.
The NASA Orion Test Flight Kennedy was reportedly threatened to be cancelled four years back. Fortunately, NASA's Orion capsule was able to survive the political debate.
The NASA Orion Test Flight Kennedy is to take place at 7:05 a.m. ET Thursday. The unmanned test capsule is reportedly scheduled to take off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station atop a Delta IV Heavy rocket to begin a two-orbit, four-and-a-half hour mission called Exploration Flight Test-1.
With the new NASA Orion Test Flight Kennedy, the Orion spacecraft is not going to Mars just yet, according to reports. The Thursday debut remains unmanned and will be lasti for 4½ hours only.
Despite this fact, the NASA Orion Test Flight Kennedy will be the farthest a built-for-humans capsule has flown since the Apollo moon missions. The mission will involve shooting 3,600 miles (5,800 kilometers) out into space for it to gain enough momentum and be able to re-enter the atmosphere at a sweltering 20,000 mph (32,000 kph).
"EFT-1 is absolutely the biggest thing that this agency is going to do this year," according to Bill Hill, NASA's deputy associate administrator for Exploration Systems Development.
"This is really our first step on our journey to Mars," he added.
That is the hope for the NASA Orion Test Flight Kennedy and the spacecraft NASA has spent eight years planning. It also reportedly took more than $9 billion developing. There is also at least seven more years to go before astronauts can actually climb on board.
If the NASA Orion Test Flight Kennedy goes well, it will end with a splashdown at the Pacific, off of Mexico's Baja coast. Navy ships will be the ones to recover the capsule for future use.
Rigged with 1,200 sensors, this initial NASA Orion Test Flight Kennedy spacecraft will be gauging the durability of the ship for when the day arrives a decade later that astronauts do climb aboard.
The advertised destinations of the ship reportedly include an asteroid to be corralled in lunar orbit for human exploration in the 2020s, as well as Mars in the 2030s.
Lockheed Martin Corp. built the capsule. The NASA Orion Test Flight Kennedy costs $370 million, reports the Washington Times.
"We're approaching this as pioneers," said William Hill from the NASA exploration systems development office. "We're going out to stay eventually. ... It's many, many decades away, but that's our intent."
The rocket stretches a great 242 feet (74 meters) high.
With the new NASA Orion Test Flight Kennedy to take place Thursday, the future Orion launches will use the mega rocket still under development by NASA. They are known as SLS or Space Launch System.
The first real Orion-SLS launch is to take place for 2018. It will be followed by the first piloted mission, set for 2021.
Considering the 7 years it took for the NASA Orion Test Flight Kennedy to finally take place, no one at NASA is pleased with the slow pace of the flight.
At best, it will be another seven years before astronauts fly Orion anywhere.
Given the present budget situation, "it is what it is," said Kennedy Space Center's director Robert Cabana, a former astronaut. The presidential election ahead could also bring further delays and uncertainties.
NASA tried to pull out all the stops for NASA Orion Test Flight Kennedy's inaugural run. The space agency has teamed up with the non-profit, educational Sesame Street Workshop to not only promote the mission, but the effort to send astronauts to Mars. Comics, video and graphics are building up the countdown.
"The astronauts of the 2030s and beyond are today's preschoolers," NASA explained on its website.
There's also a new countdown clock to herald the event.
Last week, the Kennedy Space Center took down its familiar launch countdown clock which dated back to the Apollo program. According to officials, it had become too expensive to fix and maintain. There is reportedly a new multimedia display measuring 26 feet, but taller than the previous one at 7 feet.
A successful NASA Orion Test Flight Kennedy will no doubt boost the agency's morale three years after the last shuttle launch. This will also show progress to solidify Orion's long-term future, according to USA Today.
However, even if the NASA Orion Test Flight Kennedy is to become successful, Orion will still continue struggling with tight funding, technical challenges, bureaucracy and political uncertainty that have slowed its progress in the first place.
"Obviously this launch is a stepping stone forward to whatever might happen beyond low Earth orbit," according to Jonathan Lunine, a Cornell University professor who co-chaired the National Research Council's "Pathways to Exploration" study.
The NASA Orion Test Flight Kennedy however, "will, if nothing changes, reach a dead end," he added, concluding the study.
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