Original subtitles

Today on "Impossible engineering,"

the Orion spacecraft,

the most advanced exploration vehicle ever built...

The space launch system will be the most powerful rocket

that's ever left the face of the earth.

Transporting humans to distant worlds...

We're going farther than we've ever gone before

into deep space, uncharted territory.

But to do this, engineers must take a look back

at the trailblazing innovations of the past...

This is really cool. This is like going back in time.

Here we go!

...That made the impossible...

This is an incredible piece of engineering.

...Possible.

Captions by Vitac www.Vitac.Com

captions paid for by Discovery Communications

4, 3, 2, 1.

NASA has been at the cutting edge of space travel

for over 50 years

from man's first step on the moon

to the epic international space station.

And today, they're hard at work on their next project,

a mission to top every mission that came before it...

Taking man to Mars.

Mars is like the holy grail of space exploration.

Designing a spacecraft that can survive

the over 100 million-mile journey to the red planet

is an epic engineering challenge.

Orion is just a huge engineering feat.

There are thousands of people

that are working very hard to make Orion a success.

The best engineers in the world

are all working right here on this project.

This isn't easy. We're going to space.

If it was easy, everybody would be doing it.

At the core of this revolutionary spacecraft

is the crew capsule.

It's the largest NASA has ever built,

15 feet in diameter

with enough space to accommodate four astronauts.

It's a state-of-the-art service module

equipped with unique life support

and propulsion systems

and four winged solar arrays

spanning nearly 60 feet across.

Orion will travel farther into deep space

than any other human exploration vehicle in history.

I think it's important to learn about the other planets

we have in our solar system,

how they were formed, and whether we might be able

to live there.

And to be able to answer the question,

ultimately, if we're alone.

The first hurdle facing Lara and her team at NASA...

Figure out a way to get such a large spacecraft

off the ground and into orbit.

When you fly a mission like that,

you have to take a lot of components with you,

a lot of equipment.

With that crew, they're gonna be gone a long time.

And in order to push all of that equipment

a long way away, it has to be very powerful.

To get Orion off the ground,

NASA engineers look

to the innovators of the past for inspiration.

As long as man has looked to the heavens,

he's dreamt of traveling to the stars.

In the 2nd century a.D., an ancient mesopotamian scribe

wrote about a ship blown to the moon by a storm.

And according to legend, in the 1500s,

Chinese astrologer wan hu

tried to reach the moon using rockets

traveling in a chair powered by gunpowder.

Aah!

But once the smoke cleared, he was nowhere to be seen.

Whether he made it into space remains a mystery.

Ah!

Aaaaah!

It would take the genius

of American engineer Robert Goddard

to take the seemingly impossible dream

of a rocket powerful enough to leave the earth's atmosphere

and turn it into reality.

??

Space historian Amy shira teitel is in roswell, new Mexico,

recreating one of Goddard's landmark engineering feats.

This rocket is a replica of the a5

built by rocket pioneer Robert Goddard in 1935.

And it was in this desert landscape,

away from populated areas,

that Goddard was first able to fire his rockets

to really show how powerful they were.

Goddard was fascinated by space travel as a child.

In 1915, he launched his first rocket.

But the gunpowder he used to fuel his early prototypes

was extremely inefficient.

He knew that, to ultimately leave

the pull of the earth's gravity,

he would need a far more powerful fuel source.

And so he turned to liquid propulsion,

a mix of gasoline and liquid oxygen

that would burn with a hotter reaction

and create a more powerful rocket.

Burning gasoline and liquid oxygen

together in a combustion chamber

creates a high pressure, high velocity stream of hot gas.

Passing it up through two pipes and down a nozzle

accelerates the flow of the gas even more,

producing thrust to propel the rocket upward.

The higher the temperature, the greater the thrust.

??

This is actually a replica of his 1926 rocket

that he used as a proof of concept demonstration

of the power of liquid propulsion.

He named it Nell, and it flew 41 feet in just 2 seconds

before it crashed.

It was a short but incredibly significant flight.

Goddard created the blueprint for the modern rocket.

In 1920, he published a paper claiming his designs

could be used to send payloads to the moon.

Not everyone agreed.

His radical ideas flew in the face

of accepted scientific views.

Scientists believe that because there's no air in space,

there would be nothing for a rocket to push against.

So it wouldn't be able to fly.

But Goddard had other ideas.

??

Goddard based his theory

on one of the most basic laws of physics

written by sir Isaac Newton in 1686.

It stated that for every action,

there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Unlike his contemporaries,

Goddard believed this theory would also apply

in the vacuum of space.

So here's Newton's third law of motion in action.

Imagine this skateboard is the rocket.

And the medicine ball is the hot exhaust gases

escaping from that rocket.

As I throw it forward, the force of me throwing the medicine ball

will propel me backwards

with the same force in the opposite direction.

So here we go.

That's Newton's third law in action.

Goddard successfully launched

34 liquid-fueled rockets,

reaching altitudes as high as 1 1/2 miles

at speeds approaching 750 miles an hour.

??

And today, one of his engineering masterpieces,

the a5 rocket, has been replicated

by the Albuquerque rocket society

and is set to launch in the new Mexican desert.

So this is really cool.

This is like going back in time.

This is it.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

That's amazing!

Oh.

This is really incredible.

You can just imagine Robert Goddard and his team

being out here, doing this exact thing 80 years ago.

Robert Goddard

made the seemingly impossible possible.

He researched, developed, and understood

the basic, fundamental principles

of modern space flight

and developed the rockets to make it happen.

Without Goddard's contribution,

human space flight would still be just a dream.

??

To reach Mars,

the engineers of the Orion spacecraft

need to supercharge Goddard's ingenious design...

8.4 million pounds of thrust,

it's taller than the statue of Liberty,

longer than a football field.

...And build the largest,

most powerful solid rocket booster in the world.

At NASA's michoud assembly facility,

work is underway on the Orion spacecraft's

monstrous rocket booster system.

Pat whipps is tasked

with building the propulsion system

that will send Orion on two test missions

beyond low-earth orbit.

The space launch system rocket will be the most powerful rocket

that's ever left the face of the earth.

??

Orion's solid rocket boosters

will generate over 75 percent of its thrust,

enabling the spacecraft

to carry a payload of almost 80 tons.

The rocket's core stage is a giant fuel tank.

It will store

the cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen

used to power Orion's four rs-25 engines.

Rs-25 engines were first used

during the space shuttle program.

??

The engineering that's gone into these engines

is just incredible.

I call them the Mona Lisa of mechanical engineering.

Steve wofford heads up the team

testing the space launch system's engines

at the stennis rocket facility in Mississippi.

To be able to do what they do

with the efficiency that they do

and harness that incredible amount of energy

and produce the power that they do,

it just astonishes me.

I've been in love with these engines

for over 25 years now.

??

These colossal engines are paired

with two gigantic 150-foot rocket boosters.

In march 2015, tests begin in the Utah desert.

During the two-minute burn,

engineers collect data on 103 design objectives.

The world's largest solid rocket motor

generates a jaw-dropping 3.6 million pounds of thrust,

the equivalent of 14 jumbo jets

at maximum power.

These engines will get to orbital velocity

of 17,500 miles per hour, which is about mach 25.

For Orion's 100 million mile journey to Mars,

NASA engineers are building an even more powerful version

of this rocket system.

And just a few more years down the road,

our 130-metric-ton version of the space launch system

will be able to take nearly 140 tons of payload,

ultimately taking habitats and equipment

and, of course, astronauts to the surface of Mars.

??

With Orion's propulsion system in place,

NASA now turns to their next engineering challenge...

Creating a capsule that will keep Orion's crew safe

on the up to 300-day journey to Mars.

Human beings are not meant to live in space.

So we have to deal with the vacuum of space,

the extreme temperature conditions,

the zero-gravity environment...

Things that the human body is not used to

while they're here on earth.

Providing a safe environment for Orion's crew

would be impossible without the daring attempt

made by one scientist almost a century ago.

Since the first manned launch in 1783,

balloonists wanted to go higher and higher.

In 1899, French meteorologist Leon teisserenc de bort

sent his weather balloons into the stratosphere.

Oh, l� l�!

Aeronauts were desperate to reach the stars.

But they soon found out

that their bodies simply couldn't cope.

??

Dr. Andrew Steele is treading in the footsteps

of these daredevils.

This is amazing.

It's an incredible view.

And to think that pioneering aviators

would make high-altitude flights in balloons

not dissimilar to this one.

They rapidly discovered

that the atmosphere changes dramatically as you go up.

The air gets a lot colder, but it also gets a lot thinner.

It gets much harder to breathe.

And that's 'cause the pressure goes down.

The oxygen molecules are more spread out.

And you just can't breathe deeply or fast enough

to compensate for that.

By the end of the 1920s,

daring aeronauts had reached heights of 40,000 feet.

They took an oxygen supply with them.

But they had other physiological problems to deal with.

So what happens to your body

as you go up to 12,000 meters

and approach the vacuum of space?

Well, I don't really want to try that myself.

So I've got a little marshmallow man

who's gonna demonstrate it for me.

Today's flight is only hovering around 2,000 feet.

So a vacuum jar and pump

will simulate high altitude's unforgiving conditions.

You can see now that, as we're sucking the air

out of the vacuum jar,

the marshmallows are starting to expand.

And that's because they contain little pockets of air.

And as the pressure

on the outside of the marshmallows fall,

those little pockets of air start to expand.

Now if that was me going up to ever-higher altitude

closer to that vacuum,

then the pockets of gas inside my body

would start to expand.

And as we got to really low pressure,

fluids on my exterior would start to boil.

Poor guy.

What I'm gonna do is turn off the pump

and then...

...Let the air back in.

And and you can see that, as the pressure

increases again back in that jar,

it squishes him back down to his normal size.

Though I don't think he's ever gonna be his former self again.

Traveling beyond the stratosphere

was thought to be an impossible feat.

Until daring scientist auguste piccard

proposed an audacious idea.

Hidden away in the depths of a Chicago storage facility

lies a groundbreaking craft

that finally transported man safely into the stratosphere.

Piccard wanted to travel high

into the atmosphere to study cosmic rays.

And he didn't want to work

wearing a cumbersome oxygen mask.

So he knew, if he was gonna do this and survive,

he was gonna have to take the earth's atmosphere with him.

He came up with the notion of a pressurized capsule.

Piccard turned to a local beer barrel manufacturer

to build his airtight two-man gondola.

Capsule is just over two meters in diameter.

And to keep it as light as possible,

it's made from aluminium just a few centimeters thick.

??

When sealed, the pilots can be kept alive

for up to 10 hours inside the gondola

through the use of an air recycling system

based on submarine technology.

Once inside, the oxygen was supplied

by liquid oxygen evaporating from a container.

And the carbon dioxide was scrubbed from the atmosphere

by a reaction with soda lime.

In 1931, a huge hydrogen-filled balloon

successfully lifted piccard and his assistant

to almost 50,000 feet.

The two aeronauts were the first men

to successfully break through the stratosphere.

It's incredible to think what it must've been like

for those two men to look out of this tiny porthole

and see, for the first time,

the curvature of the earth stretching out beneath them.

Outside, it was freezing cold.

It would've been impossible to breathe.

They really were incredibly brave pioneers of their time.

??

As auguste piccard safely descended

to the mountains of Austria,

there was no doubt that he had shaped

the future of high-altitude travel.

Piccard predicted that one day we'd all fly

high in the atmosphere above bad weather

and where the air resistance is lower.

And without his pioneering gondola experiments,

commercial air travel and space flight

would just be a dream.

The Orion spacecraft will travel 6 million times

farther than auguste piccard's two-man gondola.

The journey to Mars is expected to take 9 months.

This epic journey requires a super-sized capsule

for up to four astronauts,

creating a huge challenge for lockheed Martin's

crew module senior production manager, mark mccloskey.

Mass is gold

'cause any ounce I can save in building the structure

is an ounce of an astronaut,

is an ounce of something going to space.

??

??

After more than half a century of space travel,

NASA is undertaking its most daring project yet.

Aeronautical engineers are building a new craft

that will enable man to explore deep space.

Orion is going farther than humans have ever gone before.

The goal... Land a team of astronauts

on the surface of Mars by 2035.

Space is obviously a very aggressive place to be.

So there are a lot of challenges.

Everything needs to work. Failure is not acceptable.

Engineers are hard at work on the space capsule

that will support Orion's crew

on the up-to-300-day journey to the red planet.

Orion's capsule will be 15 feet in diameter

and large enough to accommodate

up to four astronauts.

Some people would compare this crew module to Apollo.

However, this is 40 percent larger than Apollo.

Each of the capsule's seven giant sections

have been machined for up to six months,

reducing the metal's weight by up to 90 percent.

This is the aft bulkhead

for the actual exploration mission vehicle.

It's got a lot of pockets

to add strength for the least amount of weight.

This huge capsule must be completely airtight

while in space.

This crew cabin structure has to stay together,

not leak, perform flawlessly on its mission.

To achieve this, engineers face a historically challenging side

to the construction process.

When people talk about welding, they think, "heat."

They see a torch, they see a rod,

and they see sparks.

And that was welding, you know? That's fusion welding, heat.

But this time-consuming technique

deforms the metal as it cools.

NASA's engineers have come up with an ingenious solution...

??

Seamless joints

using groundbreaking, state-of-the-art machinery.

In friction stir welding, you never actually melt the metal.

You get to a stage called plasticizing.

So you're actually rubbing against the metal,

heating it up, but never reaching the melting point,

forming one solid piece of metal across.

Orion's capsule will also need a life support system

for its astronauts.

So NASA engineers are building the largest-ever service module

to pair with Orion's super-sized crew capsule.

The service module's twin liquid oxygen tanks

will provide astronauts with breathable air

at sea level pressure

during their nine-month journey to Mars.

The life support systems include oxygen, oxygen regeneration,

maintaining temperature, maintaining humidity.

So things you never think about on earth

because the environment takes care of it for you.

NASA's goal is to develop a system

that can power the Orion capsule and service module

for up to three years in deep space.

To do this, engineers are building

four giant solar arrays

capable of providing

a staggering 11 kilowatts of power.

When you look at the combination

of the crew module and the service module,

you're looking at a very advanced piece of engineering,

a true state-of-the-art machine.

??

NASA's next challenge... Develop a system

that will keep the Orion spacecraft on course

during its 100-million-mile journey to Mars.

We only have so much fuel on board.

If we get a little off target

and we don't have the fuel to get back,

that obviously could mean a loss of our crew.

To do this, engineers are turning

to a revolutionary device

used by mariners over two centuries ago.

It's a piece of engineering genius

that's incredible for a piece of equipment

that was designed in the 1700s.

??

??

The Orion spacecraft will be

the most advanced exploration vehicle ever built,

designed to transport man into deep space

for the first time.

Orion is ultimately the future of space flight for humankind.

And for crew module manager, Lara kearney,

the project's ultimate destination

is the holy grail of space travel.

Being able to get the crews to Mars

will be an important part of being able to answer

whether there either was or is life on Mars.

??

But at over 100 million miles away,

the biggest concern facing engineers and astronauts

is the potential to get lost along the way.

Unfortunately, it is very easy to get lost in space.

The task of navigating to Mars

gets progressively harder the further away you go.

We only have so much fuel on board.

If we get a little off target

and we don't have the fuel to get back,

that, obviously, could mean a loss of our crew.

With the Orion crew's lives at stake,

NASA needs a solution.

For ancient mariners, earth's vast oceans

offered an equally intimidating navigational challenge.

For centuries, mediterranean sailors

were guided by the direction of the wind.

Confident they could recognize a chilly northerly...

...Or a sweltering southerly.

Aah!

But they found a still day

would leave them all at sea.

Fortunately, a more effective navigation solution

was on the horizon.

In order to know precisely where you are,

you need to know your line of latitude

and also your line of longitude.

In 1757,

mathematical instrument-maker John bird created a device

which helped mariners do just that.

This is a modern version of bird's device.

It's called a sextant.

It works by allowing the user

to measure the angle between different objects

in the sky and the horizon,

things like planets, the moon, the sun, and the stars.

The sextant enabled seafarers

to determine their location anywhere on the globe

at any time of day or night.

But sextant's device only measures latitude.

To get their exact position, mariners needed longitude.

This was first provided

by the royal greenwich observatory's

nautical almanac in 1767.

Sailors combined their calculations

with those recorded from the world-renowned observatory.

By comparing the position of the sun at local noon

to the position of the sun in greenwich on the same day

using a guide like this almanac,

we can determine our line of longitude.

This ingenious system enabled seafarers

to plot an accurate course for centuries.

But how will this 18th-century technique

stand up against a GPS?

So I've taken that noon sight with the sextant.

I've done the calculations.

And it looks like our latitude

is about 49 degrees and 55 minutes.

Our longitude is 5 degrees and 27 minutes.

And all that comes out to within less than 500 meters

of the reading we get on the GPS.

??

John bird's invention made the impossible possible.

The sextant is a piece of engineering genius

that has remained almost unchanged

since John bird's day.

In fact, merchant ships in the Navy

still carry sextants as their means of navigation.

That is incredible for a piece of equipment

that was designed in the 1700s.

As the Orion engineering team

focuses on their first test flight,

it will have a host of new technology

to call on as it navigates through space.

First of all, of course, we have the deep space radio network,

which is ground-based tracking equipment

from earth dishes

that uses the information carried in a radio signal

to actually navigate the spacecraft.

But as the Orion capsule heads further away from earth

and into deep space,

its crew will increasingly have to look to the stars

for answers, just like their nautical predecessors.

NASA has a very good understanding of stars

and their relationship to one another.

There's been a lot of mapping of the universe

to understand where the stars and the planets are.

As radio signals weaken,

astronauts will need to turn to astronavigation,

taking their own measurements

to establish their position in deep space.

The further out you get from earth,

the more diligent you have to be of milking

every piece of information.

Greg holt and his team are testing

a cutting-edge navigational device

in NASA's state-of-the-art optical tunnel.

So this is the Orion optical navigation camera system.

And the camera is actually looking

at a simulated image of the moon that's not unlike the image

that it would be taking in space.

We're gonna run that through

the image-processing routines on board

to actually extract measurements.

This brand-new system

can calculate critical dimensions,

such as the diameter of the moon

and the angle of separation between the moon and the stars,

allowing astronauts to plot their location

to a matter of feet.

It's the newest way to determine

where your spacecraft's position and velocity is in space.

There are concerns

that the high levels of radiation

in Mars' hostile environment

will disrupt Orion's on board computer systems.

If that were to happen at a critical time

with a crew on board, it could be a very bad day.

So NASA astronauts will use John bird's sextant in a pinch.

They can take these measurements between the moon and the stars

good enough to get them back home safely.

The idea that we're still able to use a sextant

is really astounding.

You can feel the salt air as you're in the spacecraft

and hear the ghosts of the mariners past

whispering to you,

giving you advice on how to take a good sight.

But staying on course

isn't the only challenge astronauts need to deal with

during their nine-month journey to Mars.

The distance is so immense

that the trip will have to be done

in a series of gigantic space hops.

Once we're out of earth's orbit,

we're gonna have to dock to a habitat

if we're gonna stay out there for any period of time.

You have to be able to get into other vehicles

or get out of that vehicle when you get there.

It's frank Moore's job

to create NASA's first-ever automated docking system

for the Orion spacecraft.

We can actually get the crew to a habitat

without them flying it themselves.

??

Frank's system is being tested today

at lockheed Martin's space operations simulation center.

It would normally take up to five astronauts

to perform these same maneuvers.

So what we're doing now is simulating the motion

of a final approach to a destination

to see if the navigation system

can actually correct the vehicle motion.

The approach will be carefully controlled

by a series of laser-guided sensors.

The closing velocity has to be very slow,

typically about 1/10 foot per second.

But we're traveling at 17,000 miles an hour.

We have to be within a couple centimeters of accuracy.

You don't want to come in too hard

'cause you can then damage the docking port.

There's no spares. They don't grow on trees.

??

As dangerous as a trip to Mars will be,

it's the return home

that presents the biggest challenge for NASA engineers.

They'll again look to an innovator from the past

for the answers...

Yes! That's massively increased our surface area,

and we're decelerating phenomenally.

...To create even more impossible engineering.

??

Engineers around the world

are joining forces with NASA

to develop a groundbreaking space exploration vehicle.

The name "Orion" will be up there

in the annals of history.

We have Mercury, gemini, Apollo.

The audacious project hopes to achieve

the seemingly impossible goal of taking man to Mars.

Orion will Usher in a completely new era

of space exploration.

Being able to take crews farther than we have ever been before

and bringing them home safely.

As difficult as it will be to send a human to Mars,

it's the trip back to earth

that presents the biggest challenge.

This will be the first time we have ever

brought anything back from the surface of Mars,

particularly something as big as the Orion spacecraft.

As it enters earth's atmosphere,

Orion will be traveling 35 times faster than a speeding bullet.

Its state-of-the-art heat shield will protect the crew

from temperatures hotter than molten lava.

But heat isn't the problem.

We're still going very fast, thousands of miles an hour.

So it's a very big challenge

to be able to slow down a 20,000-pound vehicle

all the way down to 20 miles an hour.

It's up to parachute assembly chief engineer koki machin

to tackle this seemingly impossible challenge.

It's very difficult to make measurements

on something that's deployed at 100 miles an hour.

That has a lot to do with why they're considered

the least-reliable piece of the spacecraft.

To complete the final stage of its flight,

Orion is at the mercy

of one of the simplest forms of engineering.

The use of parachutes took off in the early 1900s.

The first freefall jump in 1919

transformed parachuting into a sport.

??

But it was the need to drop cargo and deploy troops

during the first and second world wars

that drove engineers to push the boundaries

of this lifesaving piece of equipment.

Physicist Andrew Steele is experiencing

what an astronaut goes through during earth re-entry.

When we jump out of the aircraft, there'll be two forces

acting on me and George... Gravity pulling us down

and air resistance pushing us up.

And the air resistance gets larger the faster we go.

So eventually, we'll be going so fast,

the force of air resistance

will balance the gravity pushing us down.

And that means we'll have reached

what's called terminal velocity.

For an average man or woman,

this constant speed levels out at around 125 miles per hour

after 15 seconds of freefall.

Here we go.

Whoo!

Whoo-hoo-ha!

So we've just gone below 1,500 meters.

We pulled the cord, and drew out the chute,

which is stabilizing us during the free fall.

It's pulled the main parachute out of the bag.

That's massively increased our surface area.

And that means we've got much, much more

air resistance than before.

So we decelerated phenomenally.

But if you want to slow down

a much larger, faster-moving object,

a solid canopy like this won't cut it.

This was a problem first faced

by the luftwaffe's engineering team in the 1930s

as they struggled to control the landing speed

of their newly-developed jet aircraft.

The solution to their problem

came from a young German engineer named Theo knacke.

??

Theo's ribbon parachute design

revolutionized high-speed air travel.

Its ring-shaped canopy was broken

into a series of vented ribbons,

allowing enough drag to slow the aircraft down

but leaking enough air to reduce the stresses on the canopy.

Aircraft could now land on shorter runways,

decelerating from higher speeds

faster and safer than ever before.

Ohh!

That is an incredible piece of engineering.

It's revolutionized aviation and saved countless lives.

And, man, it's good fun, too.

NASA engineers will rely

on Theo knacke's 80-year-old ribbon parachute design

for Orion's re-entry.

But the largest space capsule NASA has ever built

is going to need a super-sized parachute.

This parachute is the final phase of landing.

It is roughly 12,600 square feet.

Think about your house or your apartment,

how many of those would fit in one of these is impressive.

And there's only one way to find out if it works.

At 15 feet in diameter,

it can accommodate up to four astronauts

during its missions into deep space.

To ensure a safe return to earth for the Orion crew,

engineers have designed a parachute system

modeled after an almost century-old design,

but on a colossal scale.

July 2012.

Engineers attempt their first low-velocity air drop.

The proper test would be a spacecraft...

Rather expensive.

So what we've been able to do

is integrate our parachutes into something

that looks exactly like the spacecraft

and then practice deploying.

A total of 11 chutes

gradually slow the capsule down

from a speed of around 350 miles per hour.

The 23-foot drogue chute's simplified ribbon design

stabilized the capsule,

reducing Orion's velocity down to 100 miles per hour

before the pilot chutes pull out,

deploying the three colossal mains.

When you look at a main,

you can look at the fabric in here.

And if you go calculate

the surface area of this parachute,

it is roughly 12,600 square feet.

So think about your house or your apartment,

how many of those would fit in one of these is impressive.

??

Thanks to the ingenious design of these gigantic chutes,

Orion's speed will be cut to one thousandth

of its outer space velocity in a matter of minutes.

By the time we get to the water, we're in steady state descent.

When we hit the water,

we're traveling roughly 20 miles an hour.

Despite a successful test landing,

Orion's designers are leaving nothing to chance.

Engineers are carrying out extensive water drops

at NASA's hydro impact basin in Virginia,

simulating potential splash-down scenarios

in the pacific ocean.

They're testing a variety of entry angles, wave heights,

and wind directions to ensure the self-righting capsule

will not be tripped up in the final moment

of its historic voyage to Mars.

We are committed to 100 percent mission success.

That means the crew is always safe.

We get everybody back home safe.

??

Finally, after years of development and testing

by thousands of engineers,

December 2014 marks

project Orion's first major milestone.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

And lift-off.

A new era of American space exploration.

The state-of-the-art spacecraft

soars to over 3,000 miles

in its first unmanned test flight.

We're back in space business, now.

Oh, yeah.

During its 4 1/2 hour mission,

the capsule faces a variety of hostile environments.

It passes through Van Allen's belt

and is exposed to prolonged periods of radiation

before being subjected to temperatures

in excess of 4,000 degrees fahrenheit.

But despite these incredible stresses,

critical data confirms that Orion's maiden voyage

into earth's orbit is a resounding success.

??

The Orion spacecraft and all of the thousands

of people that are working on it

are making what we thought was once impossible

a possible dream.

With a successful unmanned test flight,

Orion's designers now have their sights set

on taking man to Mars.

This is a tough task. We're up to it.

I think once we finally do it,

we could look back and say,

"this is the greatest thing we've achieved."

By drawing on the innovations of the past, adapting them,

improving them,

and making their own discoveries,

Orion's groundbreaking engineers are determined

to one day make the impossible dream

of putting a human on Mars possible.

Standing on another world,

you can almost not wrap your head around that.

Awesome.

I have no doubt that Orion

will be that next great leap for mankind.

- Splash down. - Splash down right now.

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