Guests to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex today and Friday can see a prototype of the spacecraft NASA is designing to carry astronauts into space after the shuttle's planned retirement next year. After a stint on the mall in Washington, D.C., a full-size mock-up of the Orion crew capsule is now stationed in the rocket garden outside the Visitor Complex (left).
NASA astronaut Dan Burbank will be on site Friday to talk to guests about the capsule, which is an updated, larger version of the Apollo-era capsule designed to hold four to six crew members.
After Friday, the capsule will enter Kennedy Space Center for testing in water to see how the spacecraft behaves, the kind of motion crews would experience after a splashdown and conditions recovery teams would encounter.
The Post-landing Orion Recovery Test, or PORT, is planned Monday and Tuesday.
The Orion spacecraft, to be launched on top of an Ares I rocket, is targeted to return humans to the International Space Station in 2015. By 2020, NASA hopes to return to the moon.
You can compare Orion to the Apollo 14 capsule "Kitty Hawk" on display at the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame, just down the road from the Visitor Complex and included with admission.
Check out this Web site for more information about the KSC Visitor Complex, or call (321) 449-4444. Admission is $38 plus tax for adults, or $28 plus tax for kids (ages 3-11).
Photo credit: Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex
4 comments:
Trying this again! Is this a multi-billion dollar space experiment funded wholly by United States Taxpayer dollars, now being exhibited by a private corporation for profit. I want my tax back.
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There's been an Orion mockup in NASA Central at KSC-VC since last year. What's the big deal?
The placard NASA designed to be on a stand next to the module describing the Ares rockets got the names wrong. The Ares V picture is captioned "Crew Launch Vehicle". Um, NASA?... that would be the Ares I vehicle... Ares V is the "Cargo Launch Vehicle". I guess it's been so long they forgot the titles of the new rockets their designing.
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