A test flight for Mars launched today – passengers not included.
After several delays on Thursday – due to a boat near the launch site in Cape Canaveral in Florida, and high wind speeds – NASA sent the Orion deep-space capsule on its inaugural uncrewed flight. The ship could one day ferry four astronauts on the first human mission to an asteroid or Mars.
Orion launched on a Delta IV rocket at 12:05 GMT on Friday. It will circle Earth twice over the course of 4 and a half hours, reaching an altitude of 5800 kilometres at its highest point. It will then splash down in the Pacific Ocean.
NASA, and lead contractor Lockheed Martin, are looking to see how well the crew module protects its imaginary passengers. They will keep a particularly close eye on the parachutes, the heat shield – which will face a scorching 2200 °C on re-entry – and radiation levels throughout the flight.
They will also monitor how different components, such as the launch abort system, separate from the crew module. One of the trickiest points in the flight is re-entry. During this time the ground team will lose contact with the capsule for 2 and a half minutes while superheated plasma surrounds it. This blocks all radio signals coming in or out.
A real mission is still some way off, though. A second test is slated for 2018, possibly followed by a crewed trip around the moon in 2021.
The Delta IV rocket was first tested in 2004. Designed for heavy lifting, the Delta IV is not the rocket that will eventually carry the Orion capsule on crewed missions. That duty falls to NASA’s Space Launch System, due to launch in 2017 at the earliest.
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