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WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 (Xinhua) -- NASA plans to add an unmanned flight test of the Orion spacecraft in early 2014 to its contract with Lockheed Martin Space Systems for the multipurpose crew vehicle's design, development, test and evaluation1, the U.S. space agency announced Tuesday.
This test supports the new Space Launch System (SLS) that will take astronauts farther into space than ever before, and provide the cornerstone for America's future human spaceflight efforts.
"President Obama and Congress have laid out an ambitious space exploration plan, and NASA is moving out quickly to implement2 it," NASA Associate Administrator3 for Communications David Weaver4 said in a statement. "This flight test will provide invaluable5 data to support the deep space exploration missions this nation is embarking6 upon."
Orion is part of the now defunct7 Constellation8 program canceled under President Barack Obama's 2011 budget proposal. Instead Obama urged NASA to work toward sending humans to an asteroid9 and then on to Mars -- and NASA says it wants to go ahead with that as quickly as possible.
This Exploration Flight Test, or EFT-1, will fly two orbits to a high-apogee, with a high-energy re-entry through Earth's atmosphere. Orion will make a water landing and be recovered using operations planned for future human exploration missions. The test mission will be launched from Cape10 Canaveral to acquire critical re-entry flight performance data and demonstrate early integration11 capabilities12 that benefit the Orion, SLS.
"The entry part of the test will produce data needed to develop a spacecraft capable of surviving speeds greater than 20,000 mph and safely return astronauts from beyond Earth orbit," Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations William Gerstenmaier said. "This test is very important to the detailed13 design process in terms of the data we expect to receive."
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1 evaluation | |
n.估价,评价;赋值 | |
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2 implement | |
n.(pl.)工具,器具;vt.实行,实施,执行 | |
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3 administrator | |
n.经营管理者,行政官员 | |
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4 weaver | |
n.织布工;编织者 | |
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5 invaluable | |
adj.无价的,非常宝贵的,极为贵重的 | |
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6 embarking | |
乘船( embark的现在分词 ); 装载; 从事 | |
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7 defunct | |
adj.死亡的;已倒闭的 | |
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8 constellation | |
n.星座n.灿烂的一群 | |
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9 asteroid | |
n.小行星;海盘车(动物) | |
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10 cape | |
n.海角,岬;披肩,短披风 | |
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11 integration | |
n.一体化,联合,结合 | |
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12 capabilities | |
n.能力( capability的名词复数 );可能;容量;[复数]潜在能力 | |
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13 detailed | |
adj.详细的,详尽的,极注意细节的,完全的 | |
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