Mary-Louise Hoffman
NASA evaluated how a mock-up of Lockheed Martin‘s Orion crew capsule would handle landing in high altitude with three main parachutes during a flight demonstration on Wednesday.
The parachute system helped to land NASA’s Orion demonstrator after being dropped from a military transport aircraft flying 35,000 feet above Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, NASA said Wednesday.
“We’ve put the parachutes through their paces in ground and airdrop testing in just about every conceivable way before we begin sending them into space on Exploration Flight Test (EFT)-1 before the year’s done,” said Mark Geyer, a NASA program manager.
“The series of tests has proven the system and will help ensure crew and mission safety for our astronauts in the future,” Geyer added.
NASA is scheduled to conduct an unmanned Orion flight test in December with the goal of sending the spacecraft 3,600 miles above the Earth.
Orion’s landing gear includes three main and two drogue parachutes that are built to slow the capsule down until its intended splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, according to NASA.
