A new United States (US) spaceship designed to fly astronauts to the moon, Mars and other destinations beyond the International Space Station arrived at a Florida (US) launch pad on Wednesday in preparation for an unmanned test flight in December 2014.
The debut flight of the gumdrop-shaped capsule, called Orion and built by Lockheed Martin Corporation for the US space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), is designed to test the spaceship's computers, heat shield, parachutes and other equipment.
“This is our first step on that journey to Mars,” Kennedy Space Centre Director Bob Cabana told reporters before Orion’s move to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station launch pad 37, located just south of the NASA spaceport.
The capsule will be positioned on top of a heavy-lift Delta 4 rocket, manufactured by United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Liftoff is scheduled for just after sunrise on December 4.
During the orbital test flight, Orion will fly twice around Earth, travelling as far as 5,800 kilometres from the planet so that it can slam back into the atmosphere at a speed of nearly 32,000 kilometres per hour. Orion’s heat shield should reach temperatures of about about 2,200 Celsius. “This initial test flight, which focuses on some of the highest risks to bringing the crew back safely from exploration missions, is really important to us,” said Ellen Ochoa, director of NASA’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston.
Four-and-a-half hours after launch, Orion is due to make a parachute landing in the Pacific Ocean about 1,000 km southwest of San Diego (US). “The flight itself into space is huge because we’ll see how the systems operate in the environment, but actually building the first (capsule) is as big,” Orion Program Manager Mark Geyer said.
NASA is spending about $375 million on the test flight, not including the cost of the capsule. Total spending on Orion, including more than $8 billion under the cancelled Constellation moon program, is expected to reach about $15 billion.
Future Orion capsules will fly on a new NASA rocket called the Space Launch System, currently under development under a separate $15 billion effort. The rocket, with another unmanned Orion capsule, is expected to debut in November 2018.
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