On Tuesday morning at 7am EDT, NASA successfully completed the final major flight test for their Orion crew capsule. This is the new craft NASA will use to transport humans to the Moon and Mars as a new age of space exploration begins.
The Artemis Moon mission is slated to begin next year with an uncrewed flight to the Moon. With this final flight test cleared, that should be the next major milestone in the Artemis program.
Tuesday’s uncrewed test centered on the Launch Abort System (LAS), a safety system to jettison the crew capsule away from the explosive power of the main booster rocket in the event of a launch mishap. The three-minute test went off smoothly, and engineers will now comb over the collected data in greater detail.
Thanks to clear weather at Cape Canaveral in Florida, the launch went off perfectly on time. The booster rocket lifted ...
