NASA Orion EFT-1: First Test Flight of Orion Space Capsule delayed until December

Artist's concept of a ULA Delta 4 Heavy rocket standing poised on the pad ready to launch NASA's Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1).

The first flight of Orion is now slated for December 2014.

Credit: NASA

he countdown to the maiden launch of Orion, a NASA space capsule designed to take astronauts out into the solar system, is now three months longer than previously planned.

The space agency on Friday (March 14) announced that it was retargeting the first flight of its Orion spacecraft from autumn to just before winter this year.

"The Orion team continues to work toward completing the spacecraft to be ready for a launch in [the] September [to] October [period]," NASA stated on its website.

"However, the initial timeframe for the launch of the Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) has shifted ... to early December to support allowing more opportunities for launches this year."



The EFT-1 mission will fly the Orion capsule to an altitude of approximately 3,600 miles (5,800 kilometers) above the Earth's surface, more than 15 times farther out than where the International Space Station (ISS) orbits.

By flying out to those distances, NASA will be able to judge how Orion performs in, and returns from, deep-space journeys.

Flying atop a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta 4 Heavy rocket, EFT-1 precedes the first flight of the Orion capsule on its intended launch vehicle, NASA's new Space Launch System (SLS), targeted for 2017.

By 2021, NASA plans to send astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft on a mission to the vicinity of the moon to rendezvous with a redirected asteroid, before ultimately launching a crew to Mars in the 2030s.

NASA Orion Space Capsule Lands With Two of Three Parachutes

The Orion capsule falls to Earth with parachutes deployed at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, on July 24, 2013.

Credit: NASA TV

NASA's Orion capsule, planned to be the space agency's next manned spaceship, safely landed during a flight test today (July 24) using just two of its three parachutes.

The test was the 10th in a series of maneuvers to check out Orion's parachute system, which will slow the vehicle down as it plummets through Earth's atmosphere on return trips from space.

Orion is designed to carry astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit to nearby asteroids, the moon, and eventually Mars.

The spacecraft is due to make its first test flight to space in 2014 in a mission called the Exploration Flight Test-1, and its initial crewed flight around 2021.

During today's flight test, an Orion prototype was dropped from a plane 35,000 feet (10,700 meters) over the U.S. Army's Yuma Proving Ground in southwestern Arizona.

It was the highest elevation that the capsule has been dropped from; previous tests saw mock Orion capsules released from a maximum of 25,000 feet (7,600 meters).

"The closer we can get to actual flight conditions, the more confidence we gain in the system," Chris Johnson, project manager for the Orion capsule parachute assembly system at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, said in a statement.

"What we saw today — other than the failures we put in on purpose — is very similar to what Orion will look like coming back during Exploration Flight Test-1's Earth entry next year."

Orion is equipped with three parachutes to slow its fall, but is designed to need only two of them.

During today's test, engineers simulated the failure of one chute to confirm that the other two were adequate.

The team caused one parachute to fail during the descent to understand the effects of a chute pulling away in mid-flight.

"We wanted to know what would happen if a cable got hooked around a sharp edge and snapped off when the parachutes deployed," Stu McClung, Orion's landing and recovery system manager at Johnson, said in a statement.

"We don't think that would ever happen, but if it did, would it cause other failures? We want to know everything that could possibly go wrong, so that we can fix it before it does."