Two of the spacecraft's parachutes will not deploy

Aug 7, 2015 08:13 GMT  ·  By

In a few weeks, on August 26, a model of NASA's Orion spacecraft will launch from the US Army's Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona. 

The model spacecraft will be carried by an airplane to an altitude of about 35,000 feet (nearly 11,000 meters) and then allowed to drop back to the ground.

Interestingly, NASA wants this flight to fail. Thus, two of the spacecraft's parachutes will be messed with and not allowed to deploy.

It all comes down to safety

NASA's Orion spacecraft is expected to one day carry crews of astronauts into deep space and have them land on distant orbs, Mars and an asteroid included.

“The spacecraft will serve as the exploration vehicle that carries crews to space, provides emergency abort capabilities, sustains the crew during space travel, and provides safe re-entry from deep space,” the agency explains.

To ensure a smooth and safe landing, the design for NASA's Orion spacecraft includes parachutes meant to create drag and slow it as it approaches ground.

The trouble is that, controlled test flights aside, in real-life conditions, it can happen that the parachutes fail to deploy. Were something like this to happen in space, there is no telling what would happen to the crew aboard Orion.

The doomed-to-fail test flight scheduled for later this month, during which one of the spacecraft's three main parachutes and one of its two drogue parachutes will not be allowed to deploy, will hopefully sort out this little mystery.

Plainly put, this test is intended to determine whether the Orion spacecraft would still land safely in space, should it fail to open all of its parachutes.

“This high-risk assessment is the penultimate drop test of the scheduled engineering evaluations leading up to next year’s tests to qualify the parachute system for crewed flights,” NASA says.

Not the first test flight for Orion

NASA's Orion spacecraft completed its maiden voyage in last year's December, when it launched from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, circled our planet twice and then landed in the Pacific.

During this test flight, the spacecraft reached an altitude of 3,604.2 miles (5,800.3 kilometers). While on its way back, its parachutes performed flawlessly, slowing it down from an astounding 20,000 miles per hour (32,000 kilometers per hour) to just 20 miles per hour (32 kilometers per hour).

Orion's parachutes performed flawlessly during last December's test flight
Orion's parachutes performed flawlessly during last December's test flight

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Orion will one day carry astronauts to Mars, other distant orbs
Orion's parachutes performed flawlessly during last December's test flight
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