Orion flight is ‘day 1 of mars era’
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NASA’S new Orion spacecraft yesterday zoomed toward a high point of 5,800 kilometers on a test flight, ushering in a new era of exploration that could one day put people on Mars.
The unmanned orbital journey began with a sunrise lift-off witnessed by thousands of NASA guests. Parts of the spacecraft peeled away exactly as planned, falling back toward Earth as onboard cameras provided stunning views of our blue, cloud-covered planet.
Orion’s debut was designed to be brief — just four-and-a-half-hours — from launch to splashdown, with two orbits of Earth. But for the first time in 42 years, NASA sent a spacecraft built for humans farther than a couple of hundred miles from Earth. The previous time was the Apollo 17 moon shot.
And it’s NASA’s first new vehicle for space travel since the shuttle.
“Very exciting,” NASA’s Orion program manager, Mark Geyer, said early in the flight. “We still have a bunch to go.”
NASA is now “one step closer” to putting humans aboard Orion, said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden Jr. He called it “Day One of the Mars era.”
Sluggish rocket valves and wind halted the launch on Thursday, but everything went NASA’s way yesterday as the Delta IV rocket carried Orion into orbit. The first-stage boosters detached and fell away into the Atlantic as the spacecraft soared from Florida to South Africa and beyond.
NASA was aiming for a peak altitude of 5,800km — more than 14 times higher than the International Space Station — on Orion’s second lap around the planet in order to give it the momentum for a high-speed re-entry over the Pacific.
At Kennedy Space Center, the atmosphere was reminiscent of the shuttle-flying days, but considerably more upbeat than that last mission in 2011.
In Houston, NASA’s Mission Control took over the operation once Orion was aloft. The flight program was loaded into Orion’s computers in advance, allowing it to fly essentially on autopilot, though flight controllers, all shuttle veterans, could intervene in the event of an emergency breakdown.
NASA deliberately kept astronauts off this first Orion, as it wanted to test the riskiest parts of the spacecraft before committing to a crew. Lockheed Martin already has begun work on a second Orion, and plans to build a fleet of the capsules.
The earliest that astronauts might fly on one is 2021.
To push Orion farther out on future flights, NASA is developing a megarocket known as Space Launch System. The first Orion-SLS combo will fly about 2018, again without a crew.
NASA’s last trip beyond low-Earth orbit in a vessel built for people was the three-man Apollo 17 in December 1972.
Orion will be able to carry four astronauts on long hauls and six on three-week hikes.
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