A Delta IV Heavy rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station carrying NASA’s Orion spacecraft on an unpiloted flight test to Earth orbit. Liftoff was at 7:05 a.m. EST.
During the two-orbit, four-and-a-half hour mission, engineers will evaluate the systems critical to crew safety, the launch abort system, the heat shield and the parachute system
Orion is not carrying any people, but NASA wants to find out all it can about how the spacecraft behaves in flight and what conditions it encounters in orbit and during re-entry. That’s why there are 1,200 sensors in place throughout the spacecraft and inside the cabin.
They will gauge the heat shield, radiation levels and exact conditions as Orion flies an orbital pattern that will take it through high radiation zones of the Van Allen belts and of course the scorching temperatures of coming back through the atmosphere. The spacecraft is now more than 2,100 miles above Earth on its way to a peak altitude of about 3,630 miles.
