NASA on Friday celebrated its successful four-hour test launch of the Orion spacecraft that may one day take humans to Mars, and released a video of its landing taken from aboard the USS Anchorage, the designated recovery ship for the Orion test mission.
In the video, members of NASA, the US Navy and Lockheed Martin clap and cheer as Orion emerges from the clouds to make its glorious descent and splashdown into the Pacific Ocean. The first successful test is a promising step for NASA as it sets its sights on a new era of space exploration that will hopefully see astronauts exploring asteroids, Mars and beyond.
Friday's mission was the first to test how well Orion's heat shield will stand up to the 4,000+ degree temperatures associated with re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere. Based on what we saw in the video and the rest of the mission today, it looks like Orion is well on its way towards manned missions to deep space.
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