spacetoday.net: NASA plans 2014 Orion test flight

Posted: Wed, Nov 9, 2011, 7:25 AM ET (1225 GMT)
Orion MPCV test article (NASA)

NASA announced Tuesday plans to fly its Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) capsule on an initial, uncrewed test flight in 2014. The Exploration Flight Test 1 (EFT-1) would launch the Orion capsule on an expendable rocket, most likely a Delta 4 Heavy, on a very high altitude suborbital flight. That trajectory would allow the Orion to reenter the atmosphere at high velocities like those a spacecraft would experience on a return from a deep space mission. NASA will use the data from the reentry and splashdown to refine its design of the Orion spacecraft. Future Orion missions will launch on the agency's Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket, with an initial launch, also unmanned, planned for 2017.