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Watch NASA Launch The First Test Flight Of Its Crewed, Mars-Bound Orion Spacecraft LIVE

Giuseppe Macri Tech Editor
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NASA is preparing to step back into the business of making history with the first launch of its new Orion spacecraft, which will embark on its first test flight Thursday morning to gather data critical to preparing the craft to carry astronauts from U.S. soil to an asteroid, the moon and Mars.

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The Delta IV Heavy rocket carrying Orion is scheduled to take off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral early Thursday morning following several minor technical delays, sending the spacecraft on a 4.5-hour test flight 3,600 miles above Earth, or almost 14 times higher than the orbit of the Internal Space Station.

During the flight, Orion will orbit the planet twice before re-entering the atmosphere at 20,000 m.p.h. — 80 percent of the speed Orion would be traveling at were it returning from the moon — and reach temperatures near 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit. (RELATED: NASA Previews First December Test Flight Of New Orion Spacecraft, Which Will Carry Astronauts To Mars)

According to NASA, Thursday’s Exploration Flight Test-1 will take Orion “farther than any crewed spacecraft has gone in more than 40 years” to test the spacecraft’s critical systems against radiation and other factors Orion’s team expects the ship to encounter during missions into deep space.

Orion will then deploy two stages of parachutes for a splashdown in the Pacific around noon, returning to Earth with troves of flight data for NASA engineers to analyze in preparation to send astronauts deeper into space than they’ve ever gone before.

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Tags : nasa orion
Giuseppe Macri