NASA prepares Orion human spacecraft for liftoff in December

Orion’s first deep-sea test flight is scheduled for December 4, when it will be flown to an altitude of about 3,600 miles (5,800 km) above Earth. This is 14 times farther away than the International Space Station, which flies about 260 miles (418 km) above Earth, and the furthest any spacecraft has ever reached. The test flight is currently scheduled to be carried out without astronauts.

he second Orion flight is not expected until 2018, when another unmanned capsule is set to ascend atop NASA's new megarocket, still under development, called the Space Launch System (SLS).

If both tests are successful, NASA plans to put astronauts aboard Orion in 2021 for deep-space exploration. Each capsule can accommodate up to four people.

The primary plan is to use Orion for getting humans to asteroids and Mars.

This would mark NASA’s return to the human space launch business, which the space agency left in 2011 when the shuttle program ended.


[link to rt.com]