NASA Orion Spacecraft Powered Up for the Very First Time

NASA is continuing to work on its first-ever deep space craft, Orion. Now, the spacecraft has been powered on for the very first time, marking a major milestone in the final year of preparations before it takes flight.

"Orion will take humans farther than we've ever been before, and in just about a year we're going to send the Orion test vehicle into space," said Dan Dumbacher, NASA's deputy associate administrator for exploration systems, in a news release. "The work we're doing now, the momentum we're building, is going to carry us on our first trip to an asteroid and eventually to Mars. No other vehicle currently being built can do that, but Orion will, and EFT-1 is the first step."

EFT-1 stands for Exploration Flight Test-1. This particular flight is targeted to launch in the fall of 2014. During the flight, all of Orion's avionics systems will be put to the test, including its vehicle management computer as well as its innovative power and data distribution system.  Orion will soar more than 3,600 miles above the Earth's surface during this mission, which is about 15 times further than the International Space Station. After orbiting our planet a total of two times and spending four hours in space, Orion will then return to Earth.

"It's been an exciting ride so far, but we're really getting to the good part now," said Mark Geyer, Orion program manager, in a news release. "This is where we start to see the finish line. Our team across the country has been working hard to build the hardware that goes into Orion, and now the vehicle and all our plans are coming to life."

The researchers plan to install the completed Orion spacecraft on a Delta IV heavy rocket for EFT-1. Eventually, Orion will give NASA an entirely new human space exploration capability--a flexible system that can to launch crew and cargo missions, extend human presence beyond low-Earth orbit, and enable new missions of exploration throughout our solar system.  In addition, NASA is developing a new rocket, the Space Launch System, which will help power subsequent missions into deep space starting in 2017.

Want to learn more about Orion and EFT-1? Check it out here.