Orion EFT-1 Flight (Exploration Flight Test-1) 2014 NASA; First Test Flight of New Spacecraft

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_Flight_Test-1

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Exploration Flight Test-1 or EFT-1 (previously known as Orion Flight Test 1 or OFT-1) was the first test flight of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle. Without a crew, it was launched on December 5, 2014, at 12:05 UTC (7:05 am EST), by a Delta IV Heavy rocket from Space Launch Complex 37B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

The mission was a four-hour, two-orbit test of the Orion crew module featuring a high apogee on the second orbit and concluding with a high-energy reentry at around 20,000 miles per hour (32,000 km/h; 8,900 m/s). This mission design corresponds to the Apollo 4 mission of 1967, which validated the Apollo flight control system and heat shield at re-entry conditions planned for the return from lunar missions...

Objectives

The flight was intended to test various Orion systems, including separation events, avionics, heat shielding, parachutes, and recovery operations prior to its debut launch aboard the Space Launch System, currently scheduled for some time in June 2020.

Vehicle assembly

EFT-1 Orion was built by Lockheed Martin. On June 22, 2012, the final welds of the EFT-1 Orion were completed at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, Louisiana.[It was then transported to Kennedy Space Center's Operations and Checkout Building, where the remainder of the spacecraft was completed. The Delta IV rocket was put in a vertical position on October 1, 2014, and Orion was mated with the vehicle on November 11.

Flight

The four-and-a-half-hour flight took the Orion spacecraft on two orbits of Earth. Peak altitude was approximately 5,800 kilometres (3,600 mi). The high altitude allowed the spacecraft to reach reentry speeds of up to 20,000 mph (32,000 km/h; 8,900 m/s), which exposed the heat shield to temperatures up to around 4,000 °F (2,200 °C).

During the flight, the crew module, a structural representation of the service module, a partial launch abort system containing only the jettison motor, and Orion-to-stage adapter were evaluated. The spacecraft remained attached to the Delta IV's upper stage until re-entry began and relied on internal batteries for power rather than photovoltaic arrays, which were not contained in the structural representation. Data gathered from the test flight were analyzed by the critical design review (CDR) in April 2015...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascent_Abort_Test_2

Ascent Abort Test 2 (AA-2) is a scheduled test of the Launch Abort System (LAS) of NASA's Orion spacecraft.

Orion will be launched from Cape Canaveral by the purpose-built Orion Abort Test Booster, with the LAS activating after 55 seconds of ascent at an altitude of 31,000 feet, at the point of maximum dynamic pressure, while the booster is still firing.

The attempt follows Orion's Pad Abort 1 test in 2010, and Exploration Flight Test-1 in 2014 in which the capsule first flew in space. It precedes an uncrewed flight of Orion around the moon as the Artemis 1 mission, scheduled for June 2020, and paves the way for human use of Orion in subsequent missions of the Artemis program.

As of February 2019 the test was scheduled for 12 June 2019, but in April this was delayed to 2 July.