Orion Spacecraft Completed-ready for December launch

NASA's new era of deep space exploration is about to begin with the first major step,Exploration Flight Test-1.On 4 December,the Orion spacecraft will be launched by a Delta IV-Heavy rocket and sent to an orbit of 3600 miles above Earth,or 15 times farther away than the International Space Station.During the 4.5 hour mission,Orion will orbit the earth twice before plunging toward splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California,reaching speeds of about 20,000 miles an hour and a heat shield temperature of almost 4,000 degrees F.The parachute system must slow the spacecraft from 300 mph down to a human-friendly 20 mph,delivering the spacecraft and its future crews to splashdown and US Navy-assisted recovery in one piece.*
The unmanned December mission will carefully evaluate all aspects of Orion's performance,with a special emphasis on the critical reentry phase.The spacecraft is currently inside the Launch Abort System Facility at Kennedy Space Center.The eighty-foot tall spacecraft,which consists of the LAS,crew module and service module,was completed by the installation of its four protective panels,or the Ogive,which are designed to lessen the drag and acoustic load on the crew module.It now awaits its 10 November ride to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral and mating with the Delta IV-Heavy rocket,a product of United Launch Alliance.Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor for the Orion spacecraft itself.*
Launch is scheduled for 7:05 am Eastern on 4 December.The spacecraft is intended to embark on a manned asteroid capture mission and ferry humans to Mars and beyond in the coming decades.After EFT-1,it will be launched by the Space Launch System,the largest rocket ever built,starting in 2018.*
Lockheed Martin(LMT),Alliant Techsystems(ATK)