Orion passes first test 3,600 miles up
Astronaut flight planned for 2021
NASA entered a new era of space exploration Friday when its Orion capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean after going farther from the planet than any spacecraft built for humans in more than 40 years.
The maiden test flight — made without astronauts aboard — is a step toward eventually getting astronauts to deep space: first to help snag an asteroid, and then, NASA hopes, to Mars. Orion lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., at 6:05 a.m. CST, a day after gusty wind and problems with several valves forced officials to postpone the mission.
On Friday, the 4½-hour mission appeared to go off flawlessly.
“There’s your new spacecraft, America,” said Mission Control commentator Rob Navias shortly before Orion hit the water after returning to Earth.
As it sent back images broadcast on NASA’s website, Orion orbited the planet twice about 3,600 miles above the Earth. That was farther than any spacecraft designed for humans had gone since the Apollo 17
moon mission in 1972.
It splashed into the Pacific Ocean at 10:29 a.m. Navy ships quickly moved in to transport it 600 miles to San Diego, where it is expected Monday. From there, it will be loaded onto a truck and returned to Cape Canaveral just in time for Christmas.
The successful test flight was cheered by officials from NASA and its partners in the mission: prime contractor Lockheed Martin, which built Orion, and United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed and Boeing, which built the Delta IV Heavy rocket that launched Orion into orbit.
Moments after liftoff, NASA spokesman Mike Curie said it marked “the dawn of Orion and the new era of American space exploration.”
In a post-flight news conference, Mark Geyer, NASA’s Orion program manager, said: “It’s hard to have a better day than today.” And he described the Orion and the Delta IV as “nearly flawless.”
The images of Earth seen from such a great distance, he said, “reminded us here we are again now — the United States leading exploration out into the solar system.”
Since 1972, human flights have been restricted to the orbit level of the International Space Station. But Friday’s flight went 15 times as far.
“Today we showed ourselves and the rest of the world that as a space team, we’re ready to leave our Earth neighborhood and go farther,” said Cady Coleman, an astronaut who spent six months on the International Space Station.
NASA plans another test flight of the capsule without astronauts in 2018. The space agency is targeting a trip with astronauts by 2021.
Sometime in the 2020s, NASA plans to capture an asteroid with a robotic spacecraft, then drag it to the moon’s orbit where it would connect with the Orion. Astronauts would then be able to take samples from the asteroid.
“Just the idea of having a human around the moon interacting with an asteroid — that’s mind-boggling,” NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden said Friday. “We are very confident we can do this.”
The big target, however, remains Mars, which NASA said astronauts could reach sometime in the 2030s.
Despite the excitement of Friday’s launch and talk of plans to go to Mars, NASA has been hampered by tight budgets and doesn’t have the funding for a mission to the red planet. The expedition is expected to have costs over 20 years that would dwarf those of the $100 billion International Space Station, the most expensive structure ever built.
While similar in appearance to the Apollo capsules that first flew in the 1960s, Orion was built with 21st-century manufacturing techniques and materials, said Bill Hill, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development.
The pod can hold as many as four people, one more than the Apollo vehicles. The habitable space has been expanded to more than 300 cubic feet — a 45 percent boost in roominess over Apollo’s cabin.
While the Orion was initially part of a program, called Constellation, designed to return to the moon, its mission changed after President Barack Obama’s administration killed Constellation and made Mars the goal.
NASA spent about $4.7 billion on Orion’s development and design as part of the Constellation project and expects to invest another $8.5 billion to $10.3 billion in the craft through 2021, the Government Accountability Office said in a May 2014 report.
Friday’s mission used the Delta IV rocket, but future Orion missions are to use the new Space Launch System rocket, or SLS, which is still being developed.
“The SLS remains a big question mark — both in terms of its development and funding, as well as political support,” Marco Caceres, a senior space analyst with the Teal Group, wrote in a newsletter. “Without the SLS, Orion is like a Cadillac without wheels.”
Caceres and others have warned that the Space Launch System project must be complete before a plausible timetable can be put on reaching Mars.
“Orion may be a starting point,” he wrote. “But it’s a bit of a stretch to say we’re on our way to Mars.”
Friday’s mission was designed to test some of Orion’s riskiest systems, especially its heat shield, which withstood temperatures as high as 4,000 degrees when the capsule hit the atmosphere traveling at about 20,000 mph.
“If it had not survived then the whole program would have been set back tremendously,” said Jeff Hoffman, professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Another big test was the series of parachutes designed to slow the capsule before it splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the Baja California coast.
The test flight comes after the October explosion of an unmanned Orbital Sciences rocket that was to supply the space station, and the recent crash of a Virgin Galactic spacecraft that killed the co-pilot. Officials said before Friday’s test flight that they were well aware of the risks involved in spaceflight.
Mike Hawes, Lockheed’s Orion program manager, said the data collected from the mission will be “enormously helpful,” as officials prepare for future flights. He also reflected on the beginning of his career, when he worked alongside officials from the Apollo mission.
“We’ve now finally done something for the first time for our generation,” he said. “It’s a good day.”