NASA Orion's rocket ready for critical December test flight

The high fidelity rehearsal included fully powering up the booster and loading the tanks with cryogenic fuel and oxidizer, liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen

The huge rocket that will blast NASA's first Orion spacecraft into orbit is ready to Rock 'n' Roll on a critical two orbit test flight scheduled for December.

In addition, Orion is so big and heavy that she's not launching on just any old standard rocket.

To blast the uncrewed Orion to orbit on its maiden mission requires the most powerful booster on Planet Earth, namely the United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket.

Liftoff of the state-of-the-art Orion spacecraft on the unmanned Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) mission is slated for December 4, 2014 from Space Launch Complex 37 (SLC-37) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Just days ago, the launch team successfully completed a countdown and wet dress rehearsal fueling test on the rocket itself – minus Orion – at launch complex 37.

The high fidelity rehearsal included fully powering up the booster and loading the tanks with cryogenic fuel and oxidizer, liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen.

ULA technicians and engineers practiced the countdown on Nov. 5 which included fueling the core stages of the Delta IV Heavy rocket.

"Working in control rooms at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, countdown operators followed the same steps they will take on launch day. The simulation also allowed controllers to evaluate the fuel loading and draining systems on the complex rocket before the Orion spacecraft is placed atop the launcher," said NASA.

The next key mission milestone is attachment of the completed Orion vehicle stack on top of the rocket.

Today's scheduled rollout of Orion to the launch pad for hoisting atop the rocket was scrubbed due to poor weather.

The triple barreled Delta IV Heavy booster became the world's (US) most powerful rocket upon the retirement of NASA's Space Shuttle program in 2011 and is the only rocket sufficiently powerful to launch the Orion EFT-1 spacecraft.

The first stage of the mammoth Delta IV Heavy generates some 2 million pounds of liftoff thrust.

"The team has worked extremely hard to ensure this vehicle is processed with the utmost attention to detail and focus on mission success," according to Tony Taliancich, ULA's director of East Coast Launch Operations.

ISRO GSLV III Unmanned crew module - Launch in December 2014

India will launch an unmanned crew module in December onboard a heavy rocket to test its re-entry into the atmosphere for the country's future maiden human space flight, the space agency chief said Thursday.

"We will send an unmanned crew module on the experimental GSLV-Mark III rocket in December and test its re-entry into the earth's atmosphere for a human space flight plan in future," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman K. Radhakrishnan told reporters here on the margins of an engineers conclave.

Weighing 3.6 tonnes, the crew module will be put into space orbit 100-120 km away in a satellite and brought back to earth for checking its re-entry characteristics when carrying two Indian astronauts in the proposed human space flight.

"Though the actual human space flight will be in an orbit around earth at a height of 270 km for a week, the experimental flight with the crew module in a spacecraft will go up to 100-120 km above earth to test its heat shield survive very high temperatures (about 1, 500 degrees Celsius) during the re-entry into the atmosphere," Radhakrishnan noted.

The crew module will have a parachute that will open up after re-entry into the atmosphere and fall into sea for retrieval.

"The parachute will open up for soft landing of the spacecraft carrying the crew module in the Bay of Bengal, about 450 km away from Andamans (islands), and will be retrieved by a boat," Radhakrishnan said.

The previous UPA government had sanctioned Rs.145 crore to ISRO for developing a crew module that will fly two Indian astronauts into space, space suits, life support systems and related technologies for the human space flight programme.

The Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III (GSLV) heavy rocket will, however, have a passive cryogenic stage - liquid nitrogen at super cooled temperature and gaseous nitrogen instead of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.

The space agency is integrating the rocket with the crew module at its Sriharikota spaceport in Andhra Pradesh, about 90 km northeast of Chennai.

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.