World Largest Heat Shield Attached to NASA’s Orion Crew Capsule for Crucial Fall 2014 Test Flight

(Before It's News)

Lockheed Martin and NASA engineers installing the largest heat shield ever built onto the Orion spacecraft’s crew module at the Kennedy Space Center. Credit: Lockheed Martin

In a key milestone, technicians at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida have attached the world’s largest heat shield to a pathfinding version of NASA’s Orion crew capsule edging ever closer to its inaugural unmanned test flight later this Fall on a crucial mission dubbed Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1).

One of the primary goals of NASA’s eagerly anticipated Orion EFT-1 uncrewed test flight is to test the efficacy of the heat shield in protecting the vehicle – and future human astronauts – from excruciating temperatures reaching 4000 degrees Fahrenheit during scorching re-entry heating.(…)
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© Ken Kremer for Universe Today, 2014. |
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Post tags: cape canaveral, Delta 4 Heavy, kennedy space center, NASA, Orion Crew Vehicle, Orion EFT-1

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