UK AIAA Screening Live Re-entry of Orion Spacecraft Friday

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Dec. 5, 2014) — UK AIAA, the University of Kentucky's student chapter of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, invites the UK community to a live screening of NASA's Orion spacecraft as it re-enters the earth this morning from its first flight test.

Orion's first flight was scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 4, but was postponed until Friday due to several delays. 

The screening, streamed from NASA TV, will begin around 10 a.m. in the NASA Kentucky offices, Room 112 of the Center for Robotics and Manufacturing Systems building, and the splashdown of Orion is expected around 11 a.m.

Orion is NASA's newest exploration spacecraft built to carry humans and eventually explore uncharted destinations like Mars.

The spacecraft will "carry the crew to space, provide emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during the space travel, and provide safe re-entry from deep space return velocities," according to NASA's Orion website.

With no crew aboard Orion this morning, the 4.5 hour flight test is evaluating safety systems, launch and re-entry systems, and a heat shield built to withstand 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

For more information about the event, contact Jonathan Boustani, UK AIAA student officer at jonathan.boustani@uky.edu. 

MEDIA CONTACT: Whitney Harder, 859-323-2396, whitney.harder@uky.edu