Orion spacecraft test

NASA’s Orion spacecraft is built to take humans farther than they’ve ever gone before. But for now it is still being built and tested. The latest test was a high altitude drop/parachute test. The test craft landed in the desert in Arizona on land. The actual craft will land in the ocean off the California coast. The test was to see how the chutes worked, not how the test craft lands on land. Though the real craft will be able to land on land if needed, it is designed primarily to land in water.

Orion will serve as the exploration vehicle that will carry the crew to space, provide emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during the space travel, and provide safe re-entry from deep space return velocities. The test slowed how the chutes would deploy with simulated failures. This is the last 'drop' test before the first test flight.

Orion's first flight test, called Exploration Flight Test-1, will launch this year atop a Delta IV Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 37. This test will evaluate launch and high speed re-entry systems such as avionics, attitude control, parachutes and the heat shield.

In the future, Orion will launch on NASA’s new heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System. More powerful than any rocket ever built, SLS will be capable of sending humans to deep space destinations such as an asteroid and eventually Mars. Exploration Mission-1, scheduled for 2017, will be the first mission to integrate Orion and the Space Launch System.