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posted by Fnord666 on Monday July 01 2019, @09:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the gotta-get-away dept.

On Tuesday, Orion will fly 55 seconds before violently escaping from its rocket

Nearly five years have passed since NASA first launched its Orion spacecraft to an apogee of 5,800km above the Earth, completing a successful test flight of the capsule intended to carry astronauts to lunar orbit in the 2020s.

Now, NASA is preparing for its second Orion launch, although this flight will be considerably shorter. On Tuesday morning, NASA intends to launch a boilerplate version of Orion—essentially a well instrumented vehicle without any life-support equipment or many other critical systems—on top of a solid rocket booster built by Northrop Grumman.

The rocket is actually an old Peacekeeper intercontinental ballistic missile, now refurbished for commercial purposes. It will launch the Orion to an altitude of nearly 9.5km above the Florida coast in order to test Orion's launch abort system at the point of maximum dynamic pressure. This will occur about 55 seconds after launch.

Testing the full expendable rocket system would be painful... for you.


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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday July 01 2019, @10:47PM (1 child)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday July 01 2019, @10:47PM (#862191) Journal

    The best outcome tomorrow would probably be for it to explode on the pad, but that won't happen because they are using a reliable missile to launch it.

    I think you can be assured of SLS and Orion sticking around for another 2 years, maybe much longer.

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  • (Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Tuesday July 02 2019, @12:23AM

    by RandomFactor (3682) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 02 2019, @12:23AM (#862220) Journal

    Feature Request: +1 Annoyingly Correct

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