NASA to test Orion parachute and promises something will go wrong
Video streaming by UstreamEarly Wednesday morning, NASA engineers will drop a model spacecraft big enough to hold four astronauts from 35,000 feet up in the air — and you can watch what happens next, live, right here.
NASA will host a Live Google Hangout from the test site at the U.S. Army’s Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. PDT on July 24. And the good news is that something is guaranteed to go wrong.
The engineers will simulate a failure of one of the model spacecraft’s three main parachutes, according to a release from the space agency.
The parachute test is just the latest in a battery of tests that engineers have devised for the Orion spacecraft — the first spacecraft designed to take astronauts beyond low Earth orbit.
The spacecraft is scheduled to have its first unmanned test flight in September 2014, when it will venture 3,600 miles from Earth.
The first crewed mission for Orion is not expected to take place until after 2020.
If you have questions before the Google Hangout, you can post them on Google+ or Twitter ahead of the event using the hashtag #askOrion. If you prefer, you can also post questions on NASA’s Facebook page.
And for a taste of what you might see during the test, check out this video of an Orion parachute drop test in May.
