NASA Names Newest Spacecraft

NASA has been working on a new spacecraft to take humans back to the Moon, and eventually to Mars. Until recently, the vehicle has had the super secret codename: Wil Wheaton Is Totally Awesome[1] but an astronaut on the International Space Station inadvertently disclosed the name of the vehicle when talking to mission control on an unencrypted space-to-ground radio.US space agency Nasa has named its new manned exploration craft Orion.

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It is hoped the name Orion could eventually mean as much for manned space exploration as Apollo did in the 1960s and 1970s.Orion is named after the constellation, which is one of the brightest and most easily identified in the sky. Orion sits on the Celestial Equator, too, so it can be seen from just about anywhere on the planet.

The vehicle (and the entire program) is really cool, and a fantastic replacement for the retiring space shuttle: two rockets will launch, one carrying the crew (the Crew Exploration Vehicle or CEV) and the other carrying the equipment for the landing. The two vehicles will enter orbit around Earth, where the crew will hook up with the lander and its attached "departure module" which gives the crew a boost to get to the Moon. Once there, they climb into the lander, do their thing on the Moon, then hook up with the CEV (which remains in computer-controlled orbit around the Moon) for the trip back to Earth.

The vehicle can also be modified slightly to service the ISS, and each CEV has ten uses before NASA sends it upstate to live on a farm.

The first scheduled flight will be to the ISS sometime before 2014, and its first flight to the Moon will happen before 2020.

[1] That's not true. It's actually called "Wil Wheaton Kicks Ass" or WWKA (pronounced wuh-wuh-kah!"[2]

[2] Also not true.

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