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Although this EFT-1 mission will occur several years before a crew flies in the spacecraft, the test will provide valuable early data, that can be fed into Orion\u2019s development, thus avoiding any \u201clate\u201d changes to the vehicle that could cause schedule impacts.<\/p>\n
As such, data from the mission will be directly fed into Orion\u2019s Critical Design Review (CDR) in 2015. It is not yet known if the slip will result in the CDR being pushed to the right.<\/p>\n
Because Orion\u2019s launch vehicle of choice \u2013 the Space Launch System (SLS) \u2013 won\u2019t be available for the EFT-1 mission, a Delta IV-H was purchased for the role of lofting Orion into space, with the EELV\u2019s Upper Stage providing the second leg of sending the spacecraft into an orbital path that will mimic the vehicle\u2019s return from a deep space mission.<\/p>\n
![\"Z3A\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Z3A.jpg\")
The first major rocket hardware elements arrived in Florida within the pre-scheduled timeframe, with two of the booster stages for the Delta IV-Heavy shipped to the Space Coast over the past week.<\/p>\nThe final booster is nearing completion at the United Launch Alliance facility in Alabama, prior to its shipping next month, along with the Upper Stage. Final integration work will take place inside ULA\u2019s Horizontal Integration Facility for processing and testing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a very exciting time for NASA,\u201d said Bill Hill, NASA assistant deputy associate administrator for exploration systems. \u201cEFT-1 is a big milestone for us, and is the start of venturing further into space than we ever have before. Seeing these rocket boosters roll out headed for the Cape is a testament of the hard work taking place to help further NASA\u2019s space exploration goals.\u201d<\/p>\n
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![\"EFT-1](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Z317.jpg\")
The mission \u2013 involving two orbits to a high-apogee, with a high-energy re-entry through Earth\u2019s atmosphere on what is a multi-hour test \u2013 will provide critical re-entry flight performance data and demonstrate early integration capabilities of the spacecraft.<\/p>\nThe launch date has slipped numerous times. However, the September target had held firm, with the numerous elements of the flow towards launch remaining on target.<\/p>\n
The previous slip, to September, was \u2013 as per the NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) \u2013 claimed to be because the \u201cpacing element\u201d was the Delta IV-H itself.<\/p>\n
The latest launch date slip \u2013 known to L2 sources since earlier this month when the USAF meeting had taken place \u2013 was the subject of a NASA level negotiations that attempted to return the mission to the September target. However, that effort failed, with the Agency now confirming the move to December.<\/p>\n
*Click here for more Orion news articles*<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Orion team continues to work toward completing the spacecraft to be ready for a launch in September-October. However, the initial timeframe for the launch of Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) has shifted from September-October to early December to support allowing more opportunities for launches this year,\u201d NASA said in a release on Friday.<\/p>\n
![\"EFT-1](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Z451.jpg\")
NASA is currently claiming the new launch date will be December 4. However, the USAF manifest meeting placed EFT-1 on a December 15 target. A confirmed launch date is likely to be forthcoming over the coming weeks.<\/p>\nULA have a very busy 2014 manifest, which wasn\u2019t helped by a long stand down of the Delta IV caused by further investigations into an earlier Upper Stage issue.<\/p>\n
This caused a long delay to the launch of the GPS IIF-5 satellite \u2013 which was eventually launched successfully on February 21 \u2013 and a knock on effect for the following manifest.<\/p>\n
The first Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness system (GEO SSA) satellite \u2013 initially known as AFSPC-04 \u2013 has jumped around on the near-term manifest a number of times, to targets both before and after EFT-1. It is now assured to launch before Orion\u2019s debut.<\/p>\n
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(Click here to join L2: http:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/l2\/ )<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Orion\u2019s first trip into space has been delayed by nearly three months, following a manifest decision that prioritized the launch of a military satellite for the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness (GEO SSA) system. Due to manifest pressure and spacing requirements between Delta IV launches, a USAF manifest board moved to ensure to the military satellite was given […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29995,"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":[8296,3688,640],"class_list":["post-39626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-delta-iv","tag-eft-1","tag-orion"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39626"}],"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=39626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}