Lockheed Martin's Groundbreaking Orion Spacecraft Continues To Prove Valuable
By Mark Taylor
LITTLETON, Colo. (CBS4) - The Orion spacecraft that made headlines in late 2014 is now at Lockheed Martin in Littleton and being used to help take humans deeper into space.
In December 2014, the Orion traveled further into space than any spacecraft in 42 years. Many saw it as the beginning of a new era of space travel. It successfully landed in the Pacific Ocean after about 4.5 hours in space.
Now the same spacecraft is in Colorado and being used as a testing subject.
"This spacecraft is designed to go all the way to Mars and back," Dan Qvale, an Orion test manager, said Wednesday.
Engineers at Lockheed Martin are testing the effects of powerful rockets on the capsule and eventually the astronauts inside.
"The speakers you see will essentially recreate the same sound pressure and noise that the rocket would when it was launching," Qvale said.
The experiment is extremely loud and people who live around the facility may hear it. The experiment usually requires possibly disassembling the spacecraft and shipping it to another location. By using some 1,500 speakers it saves money and time.
"We are trying to find out how we can streamline the program and make it more affordable and also reduce the schedule," Shane Roskie, an Orion test manager, said.
Future missions for the Orion project will require rockets more powerful than ever.
"This is the future of America," Roskie added.
Workers on the Orion project hope that it inspires the next generation of scientists, engineers and even astronauts.
"Projects like this, I think, inspire a lot of kids," Qvale said.
As for what is next, NASA's next planned flight for Orion will be an unmanned mission to circle the moon in 2018, and then send a manned mission into lunar orbit in 2023. Mars missions have a tentative date set sometime in the 2030s.
Mark Taylor is a weekend morning anchor and reporter with CBS4 news covering a wide variety of stories. Follow him on Twitter @MarkTaylor_TV.
