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Orion Lifts Off – First Critical Step On The Journey To Mars
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Mankind’s exploration of our Solar System took a giant stride forward on Friday with the launch of NASA’s newest spacecraft, Orion.
The first Orion mission achieved liftoff at 7:05 a.m. EST as it blasted off atop a ULA Delta IV Heavy rocket from its launch pad at NASA’s Cape Canaveral facility in Florida.
While Orion is expected to eventually take the first men to Mars, this first mission is essentially a short, unmanned test run – designed to subject the craft to the hostile environment of space and the standard, but violent, re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.
In its first mission, Orion will orbit the Earth twice and travel 3,600 miles into space – the farthest a human-rated spacecraft has traveled from Earth since the Apollo 17 mission, 42 years ago.
After clearing the launch tower at approximately 7:06 a.m., Orion and the rocket hit the maximum dynamic pressure, when aerodynamic forces are highest, one minute later – a point known as ‘max q’. Moments later, the mission broke the sound barrier, and at about 7:09 a.m. two core stages of the Delta IV rocket burned through their fuel and dropped away, leaving a single core rocket pushing Orion out into space.
Ninety-three seconds later, the rocket’s remaining first stage rocket fell away and its second stage, a RL-10B engine, took over. The second engine burned for just under 12 minutes to set Orion into its first-ever orbit of Earth at approximately 7:23 a.m.
The craft stayed in orbit for another 97 minutes, and as it orbited, Orion conducted a ‘barbecue roll’, which rotates the ship to keep any one side from overheating due to solar radiation.
The Orion launch was delayed once due to a technical issue, and officials from United Launch Alliance (ULA) and Lockheed Martin, which created Orion, announced the launch would proceed pending the completion of the Launch Readiness Review.
“Orion’s flight test is designed to test many of the riskiest elements of leaving Earth and returning home in the spacecraft,” NASA said on Tuesday. “It will evaluate several key separations events, including the jettison of the launch abort system that will be capable of carrying astronauts on future missions to safety if a problem were to arise on the launch pad or during ascent to space, and the separation of the Orion crew module from its service module ahead of its reentry though Earth’s atmosphere.”
On Thursday morning, NASA announced that issues with a fill-and-drain valve on the Delta IV rocket would delay the launch until Friday.
The US space agency noted that the Orion launch comes amidst changes at Cape Canaveral as it transitions into a multi-user facility. NASA said the Orion launch also serves to highlight the capabilities of Cape Canaveral in this new era of public-private spaceflight endeavors.
“With lessons learned from Orion’s flight test, NASA can improve the spacecraft’s design while building the first Space Launch System rocket, a heavy booster with enough power to send the next Orion around the moon for Exploration Mission-1,” NASA said. “Following that, astronauts are gearing up to fly Orion on the second SLS rocket on a mission that will return humans to deep space for the first time in more than 40 years.”
Waiting for splashdown
Orion is expected to splashdown in the Pacific at around 11:29 a.m. EST. Ikhana, NASA’s remotely piloted, unmanned aircraft system (UAS), will be used to capture video of the Orion crew module Exploration Flight Test 1 (EFT-1) as the module descends through the atmosphere into the Pacific Ocean.
Video will be sent real-time via satellite to NASA TV for live broadcast of the module’s descent and recovery. The aircraft will depart Armstrong hours before EFT-1 launch to arrive at the planned reentry and splashdown area ahead of Orion.
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Source: http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1113293576/orion-launch-successful-120514/
