Orion is on its way to Florida after its successful launch and re-entry

Dear reader and followers,

After its successful launch last week , and its splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, the Orion spacecraft has been loaded on the USS Anchorage. The spacecraft is nestled inside the well deck of the amphibious ship during the trek from its splashdown point about 970 kilometers southwest of San Diego. Orion’s flight tested many of the systems most critical to crew safety, including key separation events, parachutes and its heat shield. During Orion’s re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, the spacecraft endured speeds of 8400 meters per second and temperatures near 2200°C.

Credit images: +NASA 

President Obama, spoke to Julie Kramer White, the Orion’s chief engineer, for the successful Orion flight test. He also noted the spacecraft’s mission, saying that “when a human is the first to set foot (on Mars), they will have Julie and her team to thank and at that point, I’ll be out of the presidency and I might hitch a ride.” 

The Orion spacecraft was off-loaded from the well deck of the USS Anchorage on Monday December 8th. The ship’s crew along with NASA and Lockheed Martin teams retrieved the spacecraft from the Pacific Ocean at the end of the highly successful Orion flight test that saw the Orion fly about 5800 km above Earth in a 4.5-hour evaluation of critical systems. Now Orion spacecraft , will perform a trip cross-country back to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Credit image: +NASA 

Source: +NASA

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NASA will build the most powerful rocket ever with Boeing

Dear readers and followers,

+NASA has reached a milestone in its development of the Space Launch System, or SLS, which is set to be the most powerful rocket ever and may one day take astronauts to Mars. After completing a critical design review, Boeing has finalized a huge  contract of 2.8 billion dollars with the US space agency. The deal allows full production on the rocket to begin. Virginia Barnes, Boeing's Space Launch System vice president and program manager announced “Our teams have dedicated themselves to ensuring that the SLS [...] the largest ever [...] will be built safely, affordably and on time.”

The last time NASA’s completed a critical design review of a deep-space human rocket was 1961, when the space agency assessed the mighty Saturn V, which ultimately took man to the moon.

Work on the 98 meters Space Launch System is spread throughout Southern California, including Boeing's avionics team in Huntington Beach. The rocket’s core stage will get its power from four RS-25 engines for former space shuttle main engines built by Aerojet Rocketdyne of Canoga Park. The rocket, which is designed to carry crew and cargo, is scheduled for its initial test flight from Cape Canaveral, Fla., in 2017.

The rocket will carry the Orion spacecraft, built by Lockheed Martin Corp., which can carry up to four astronauts beyond low Earth orbit on long-duration, deep-space destinations including near-Earth asteroids, the moon, and ultimately Mars.

The first mission will launch an empty Orion spacecraft. The Orion spacecraft is still in development. Few days ago, the parachute system has been tested at very high altitude. The second mission is targeted for 2021 and will launch Orion and a crew of up to four NASA astronauts. The rocket's initial flight-test configuration will provide a 77-ton lift capacity. The final evolved two-stage configuration will be able to lift more than 143 tons.

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The next NASA's spacecraft to Mars arrived at Kennedy Space Center

Dear follower,

After Curiosity, the rover sent to the red planet by +NASA to explore the land of Mars, the American space agency, works on a new spacecraft : MAVEN. This spacecraft should be sent before the end of this year.

Credits: +NASA / Tim Jacobs

The new Mars spacecraft called MAVEN for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution arrived on August 3rd at the +NASA agency at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. MAVEN was flown to Florida for launch processing from Buckley Air Force base near the +Lockheed Martin facility in Littleton, Colorado, where the spacecraft was built.

The next Mars mission should lift off on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket in November 2013. The travel of the spacecraft should be around 10 month. This mission will be the first one dedicated to studying Mars' upper atmosphere and the scientists of +NASA and +NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory hope to find traces of the ancient environment of the red planet.

NASA IRIS spacecraft

Credits: +Lockheed Martin