After the Shuttle:Preparing for Orion Flight Tests

Even as progress is made toward turning over routine low earth orbit transport to contractors such as SpaceX and Orbital Sciences,below the radar,NASA'a deep space team is quietly building momentum,preparing the Orion spacecraft for its upcoming Exploration Flight Test-1 in 2014.The EFT-1 will be conducted by Lockheed Martin Space Systems.It is an unmanned mission to evaluate the spacecraft's readiness for a subsequent manned flight test.Orion will be launched on the Delta IV Heavy rocket for EFT-1.The manned test flight to follow will be launched on the new deep space rocket,the Space Launch System,or SLS.The SLS will carry astronauts to the asteroids and beyond,its upper stage powered by the J2X engine.A number of engineering studies and spacecraft fabrication activities,along with Kennedy Space Center renovations,are underway to prepare the Orion spacecraft for EFT-1 and the decades of exploration ahead.Mission Control has also begun to transform itself for this first major step of the Orion program,Exploration Flight Test-1.These preparatory industrial,construction and engineering moves,as well as software integration,parachute and splashdown tests are perhaps not very exciting to the mainstream media,but are the essential underpinnings of the bold new Orion era of manned space flight. Lockheed Martin(LMT),Orbital Sciences(ORB)