Amid a wary atmosphere with the public all too aware of two recent U.S. spaceflight accidents, NASA has announced plans for the initial test flight of its Orion crew capsule that may someday take astronauts on a journey to Mars.
The Orion capsule will be launched in an unmanned test flight from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Dec. 4, the space agency says.
The risky nature of all space flight was underlined in two accidents in October.
On Oct. 28 a cargo capsule destined for the International Space Station was lost in the explosion of its Orbital Sciences Antares booster rocket seconds after launch in Virginia.
And on Oct. 31, one test pilot was killed and another injured in the crash of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo space tourism craft over Mojave, Calif.
Neither accident had anything in common with the systems of the Orion, NASA officials said, so no review was required and the agency has not modified its plans for the capsule's test.
"Space operations is hard, and they proved that last week," said William Hill, who takes part in exploration systems development for NASA. "It was a tough week. It's a tough business we're in."
Launch operations and high-speed re-entry systems such as attitude control, avionics, the heat shield and parachutes will be evaluated in the Orion Test Flight, NASA said.
In the 4-hour test, Orion will circle the Earth twice at a distance of up to 3,600 miles before reentering the atmosphere at around 20,000 mph, slowing for an eventual parachute landing in the Pacific Ocean, the agency announced.
The main goal of the test flight is "to learn about where the challenges are so we can minimize the risk when we actually put people on board," said Mark Geyes, NASA's Orion program manager.
A review of the capsule's readiness a couple of weeks ago, before the accidents in Virginia and California, were "very thorough," he said. "We have not changed any of our plans. It just reminds us of the risk."
NASA plans to eventually mate Orion capsules with its Space Launch System rockets, presently under development, to fly astronauts on missions to an asteroid, the moon, and eventually to Mars.
The first astronauts are scheduled to make flights in the 4-passenger Orion sometime in 2021.
The Dec. 4 test flight will cost $375 million, not including the cost of building the Orion capsule; total spending on the Orion project is expected to total around $15 billion.
