14 DAY TRIAL // Officials at NASA announce that a mockup test version of the American space agency's future Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (MPCV) is currently getting ready for a one-month, cross-country trip, which will take it from Virginia to California ahead of a critical test early next year.
The vehicle is currently at the NASA Langley Research Center, in Hampton, Virginia. Over the next four weeks, it will travel through Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona to reach its destination, the Naval Base San Diego, in California.
This is where the Orion test vehicle is scheduled to undergo an Underway Recovery Test in February 2014, which will determine how the space capsule will be recovered after landing at the end of its Exploration Flight Test – 1 (EFT-1), which will take place in September 2014.
During Orion's maiden flight, an unmanned version of the new capsule will be launched to an altitude of about 5,800 kilometers (3,600 miles), before reentering Earth's atmosphere at more than 32,190 kilometers (20,000 miles) per hour. The capsule should then make a soft landing somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.