{"id":16736,"date":"2014-12-19T22:11:09","date_gmt":"2014-12-19T14:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/orion-is-back-home\/"},"modified":"2014-12-19T22:11:09","modified_gmt":"2014-12-19T14:11:09","slug":"orion-is-back-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/orion-is-back-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Orion is back home"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Orion
Orion passes the KSC Visitor Complex. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Completing a 2,700-mile journey across the United States, America\u2019s inaugural Orion spaceship arrived back home at the Kennedy Space Center on Thursday, just under two weeks after its trial by fire.<\/p>\n

Orion, tucked in a shipping container, made the trek back to Florida from Naval Base San Diego in California, where the capsule was brought ashore from its Pacific splashdown.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom a waypoint over the Pacific Ocean, there\u2019s your new spacecraft, America,\u201d NASA commentator Rob Navias said Dec. 5 as Orion descended gracefully under three main parachutes.<\/p>\n

After launching from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at dawn, a United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket delivered Orion into its preliminary orbit. From there, the rocket\u2019s upper stage boosted Orion a second time, to reach a high point of 3,604 miles.<\/p>\n

It was a two-orbit flight test to check out the spacecraft\u2019s avionics, software, radiation protection and heat shield, re-entering at 20,000 mph to simulate a deep-space return to stress its systems while unmanned.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have splashdown, Orion is back on Earth. America has driven a golden spike as it crosses a bridge into the future,\u201d Navias added at 11:29 a.m. EST, capping a four-hour, 24-minute flight in space.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe flight itself was such a great success, but that\u2019s only the beginning of the story,\u201d said Orion Program Manager Mark Geyer. \u201cNow we get to dig in and really find out if our design performed like we thought it would. This is why we flew the flight. We demonstrated on Dec. 5 that Orion is a very capable vehicle. Now we\u2019re going to keep testing and improving as we begin building the next Orion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Initial inspection of the crew module turned up nothing unexpected. There were indications of some micrometeoroid orbital debris strikes on the sides of Orion.<\/p>\n

With the spacecraft back at Kennedy, where it was assembled and prepared for launch, engineers will be able to remove the back shell of the spacecraft and perform inspections of its cabling, fluid lines, propulsion system and avionics boxes. Heat shield samples already have been removed and sent to a laboratory where their thickness, strength and charring will be examined.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Orion passes the KSC Visitor Complex. Credit: NASA Completing a 2,700-mile journey across the United States, America\u2019s inaugural Orion spaceship arrived back home at the Kennedy Space Center on Thursday, just under two weeks after its trial by fire. Orion, tucked in a shipping container, made the trek back to Florida from Naval Base San […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4201,3688,640],"class_list":["post-16736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-delta-369","tag-eft-1","tag-orion"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16736"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16736\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}