March 23, 2015

Things are looking up for NASA's journey to Mars. (Credit: Reeves Smith Creative)

Christopher Pilny for redOrbit.com @NotRealChainsaw

Last week, redOrbit was afforded the (insane) opportunity to tour NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center. So, understanding you dont get many opportunities like this, we brought along our videographer who captured the entire thing. Well be rolling out the footage over the next few weeks.

One of the coolest aspects of the tourand really we were very fortunate to see it, thanks to a snow-induced-reschedulingwas the heat shield from Orions Exploration Flight Test-1. Launched on December 5th, 2014, it returned to Earth a few hours later after reaching an altitude of 3,600 miles and orbiting the planet twice. On its re-entry it reached temperatures of 4,000 degrees F, which is a lot, but is really thrown into light when you consider lava sits comfortably around 2,000 degrees F.

Re-entry is balmy, to say the least.

But enough from us: Check out the video to get all the Orion heat shield facts. And what the test flight meant for our #JourneyToMars moving forward.

And stay tuned for more from our visit to the Marshall Space Flight Center.

Follow redOrbit onTwitter,Facebook,Google+, Instagram andPinterest.

Continued here:

VIDEO: Orion's heat shield arrives at MSFC