Image courtesy of NASA’s Johnson Space Center
The Orion spacecraft, which is being designed for potential travel to Mars, performed extremely well on its first flight to outer space. That Dec. 5, 2014, flight, called Exploration Flight Test 1, “was a smashing success,” says engineer Kelly Smith, an EFT1 flight controller who helped design the spacecraft’s guidance and navigation controls system. Next up for Orion is Exploration Mission 1, with a launch scheduled for late 2018.