More than 450 guests at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida welcomed the arrival of the agency’s first space-bound Orion spacecraft Monday, marking a major milestone in the construction of the vehicle that will carry astronauts farther into space than ever before.
In this image, Kennedy Space Center Director Bob Cabana, Orion Program Manager Mark Geyer, Senator Bill Nelson and NASA Associate Administrator Lori Garver pose for the media in front of the Orion EFT-1 Crew Module.
Orion will be the most advanced spacecraft ever designed. It will provide emergency abort capability, sustain astronauts during space travel and provide safe re-entry from deep space.
The space-bound Orion will launch on Exploration Flight Test-1, an unmanned mission planned for 2014. The spacecraft will travel 3,600 miles above the Earth’s surface, 15 times farther than the International Space Station’s orbital position. This is farther than any spacecraft designed to carry humans t has gone in more than 40 years. The primary flight objective is to understand Orion’s heat shield performance at speeds generated during a return from deep space.Image Credit: NASA/Radislav Sinyak