On Friday December 5th Orion, NASA’s newest space craft, blasted off at approximately 7:05 am from Cape Canaveral Air Force Space Station in Florida. It was an unmanned shuttle, set to test its abilities and safety systems and eventually travel to Mars! Here is a blow by blow from NASA’s Website I found it very interesting or just watch the cool videos I have below!
For the first time in a generation, NASA is building a new human spacecraft that will usher in a new era of space exploration. A series of increasingly challenging missions awaits, and this new spacecraft will take us farther than we’ve gone before, including Mars. Named after one of the largest constellations in the night sky and drawing from more than 50 years of spaceflight research and development, the Orion spacecraft is designed to meet the evolving needs of our nation’s deep space exploration program for decades to come. It will be the safest, most advanced spacecraft ever built, and it will be flexible and capable enough to take us to a variety of destinations.”
Excited for the original scheduled launch on December 4th, I even had my students watching and waiting for the big blast off during science class. However, due to high winds the NASA decided it would be safer to launch the following day. Yes, it was a great moment to discuss how NASA had halted many of its launches do to many failed missions. Orion is designed to be the safest space shuttle ever built. We talked about how long the mission would be, its flight path and how it would be recovered from the pacific ocean 4 hours later that day.
Selene Y. Willis, PhD 