ORION MISSION

WHAT IS IT?

• Orion is built for traveling beyond Low Earth Orbit.
• Orion will serve as a vehicle to carry crews to Space.
• Orion will help our future.

ORION

• This space craft is named after one of the largest constellations.
• This spacecraft will be the safest and most advanced spacecraft ever built.
• Built with a ton of technological advancements; life support, thermal protection, and more safety advancements.

TEST LANCHES

• A successful test launch at White Sands Missile Launch in NM was completed.
• This launch was for testing the escape capability of Orion in the event of emergency on the launch pad.
• With extra testing at Lockheed Martin's facilities in Denver okayed the ability to withstand harsh environments such as: launch, abort, re-entry and space flight.

FUN FACTS

• In order to simulate the Orion's landing systems, more tests were conducted at the Yuma Army Proving Grounds.
• Tests took place in the ocean and NASA's Hydro Impact Basin. This created a similar behavior to actual landing in the "Splashdown" in the Pacific Ocean.

DATES AND SPEEDS

• All of these took place leading up to the uncrewed flight test of Orion in 2014.
• This practice test launched the spacecraft 3,000 miles into space reaching over a speed of 20,000 mph before re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.

ADVANCEMENTS

• More tests are to come providing more information as we build to the first crewed launch.
• Orion is used for our benefit. This will utilize advances in many things: Communication, life support, structural design, navigation and power, etc.

MAVEN

BASIC INFO

• Sept. 19th, 2014.
• Mars Atmosphere Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN), a spacecraft, went int orbit around Mars.
• Completed an interplanetary journey for 10 months tracking over 422 million miles.

EXTRAS

• MAVEN is part of NASA's Mars Scout program.
• Explored the upper atmosphere, ionosphere of Mars and interactions with the sun and solar wind.
• Ionosphere: A layer of an atmosphere containing high concentration of ions and free electrons, containing the ability to reflect radio waves.

OUR SOURCE

• NASA app