CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. NASA's Orion deep-space capsule hit a historic peak during its first robotic test flight on Friday, and then splashed down into the Pacific Ocean for a picture-perfect ending. <\/p>\n
On the way down, the cone-shaped spacecraft went through a \"trial by fire\" during which the heat of atmospheric re-entry rose as high as 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit, or twice the heat of molten lava. <\/p>\n
\"America has driven a golden spike as it crosses a bridge into the future,\" NASA spokesman Rob Navias declared as Orion hit the water, 275 miles west of Baja California, at 11:29 a.m. ET. Recovery ships converged to bring the capsule back to shore. <\/p>\n
The finale came less than four and a half hours after Orion's launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. On Thursday, gusty winds and a balky fuel valve kept the United Launch Alliance Delta 4 Heavy rocket grounded, but nothing went wrong on Friday. <\/p>\n
\"Liftoff at dawn! The dawn of Orion, and a new era of American space exploration!\" launch commentator Mike Curie said, as the rocket blasted through the clouds just after sunrise at 7:05 a.m. ET. <\/p>\n
NASA and its commercial partners are designing Orion to take astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid in the 2020s, and to Mars and its moons in the 2030s. For that reason, NASA portrayed Friday's test flight as a first step toward deep-space exploration. The mission is known as Exploration Flight Test 1, or EFT-1. <\/p>\n
\"I would describe it as the beginning of the Mars era,\" NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said on NASA TV. <\/p>\n
Orion's flight marked the first time since the Apollo 17 moon mission in 1972 that a vehicle designed to carry humans went beyond low Earth orbit. <\/p>\n
Mission managers said the rocket and capsule performed perfectly during the initial phases of the test. \"It was just a blast to see how well the rocket did,\" said Mark Geyer, NASA's Orion program manager. <\/p>\n
After Orion made its first circuit around the planet, the rocket's upper stage kicked it into a second, highly eccentric orbit that looped 3,604.2 miles from Earth. That's 15 times farther away than the International Space Station. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Here is the original post:<\/p>\n
Blastoff! 'Mars Era' Begins With Orion Test Flight<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. NASA's Orion deep-space capsule hit a historic peak during its first robotic test flight on Friday, and then splashed down into the Pacific Ocean for a picture-perfect ending. On the way down, the cone-shaped spacecraft went through a \"trial by fire\" during which the heat of atmospheric re-entry rose as high as 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit, or twice the heat of molten lava Continue reading