NASA Invites Media to Witness Final Orion Parachute Test in Arizona Desert

NASA will air the final test Wednesday, Sept. 12, of the parachute system for its Orion spacecraft, which will carry astronauts to the Moon and beyond. Live coverage of the test from the U.S. Army’s Proving Ground in Yuma, Arizona will begin at 10:15 a.m. EDT on NASA Television, the agency’s website, and the Orion Facebook page.

NASA will air the final test Wednesday, Sept. 12, of the parachute system for its Orion spacecraft, which will carry astronauts to the Moon and beyond. Live coverage of the test from the U.S. Army’s Proving Ground in Yuma, Arizona will begin at 10:15 a.m. EDT on NASA Television, the agency’s website, and the Orion Facebook page.

An Orion test capsule will be dropped from a C-17 aircraft at an altitude of more than six miles to verify the spacecraft’s complex system of 11 parachutes, cannon-like mortars, and pyrotechnic devices work in sequence to slow the capsule’s descent for a safe landing on Earth.

To date, such tests have evaluated Orion’s parachute performance during normal landing sequences, several failure scenarios, and a variety of potential aerodynamic conditions, to ensure the safe return of astronauts from deep space missions.

Find more information about Orion at: https://www.nasa.gov/orion

NASA successfully tested the Orion spacecraft’s parachute system on March 16, 2018, at the U.S. Army Proving Ground in Yuma, Arizona, during which engineers integrated a partial system failure into the test protocol for the first time. For its final test on Sept. 12, 2018, an Orion test capsule will be dropped from a C-17 aircraft at an altitude of more than six miles to verify the spacecraft’s complex parachute system provides a safe landing on Earth. Credits: NASA/ James Blair

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