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Eyes On Orion: Local Viewing Session For NASA Space Craft Launch

John Raoux
/
AP
NASA's new space craft, Orion, is scheduled to launch on Friday, Dec. 5 at 7 a.m. John O'Meara, an associate professor of physics at St. Michael's College, is hosting a launch party viewing session for the event.

NASA’s plans to launch their new space craft, Orion, on Friday, Dec. 5 at 7 a.m. It is set to travel 3,600 miles from earth, orbiting the planet two times, before returning to land in the Pacific Ocean approximately five hours later.

John O'Meara, an associate professor of physics at St. Michael's College, is excited about the possibilities Orion opens up to space travel. “The primary purpose of Orion is to carry crew," O’Meara says. “As designed right now, it is primarily a crew transport vehicle to do things like meet up with the space station, or to bring crew to future space crafts to go to the moon, go to an asteroid and go to Mars eventually. This is all part of NASA’s primary goal of getting astronauts out to Mars.”

"Orion is a piece that is needed to take people out of lower earth orbit, to take people to the moon and to mars eventually." - John O'Meara, associate professor of physics at St. Michael's College

However, this month’s launch will be unmanned and serve as a test for future launches. “There are many aspects of the craft that you have to test, [including] the abort system that’s on top of the capsule in case something goes wrong during launch. They are testing the heat shield by having Orion come back into the atmosphere at 20,000 miles per hour, heating the shield up to 4,000 degrees … It’s really an integrated test for all of the things that they’ve tested in some ways individually, but not as a full package until now,” O’Meara explains.

O’Meara sees Orion becoming an integral part of most missions involving human astronauts. “Orion is a piece that is needed to take people out of lower earth orbit, to take people to the moon and to Mars eventually,” O’Meara says.

"It's going to be the first time in a long time that I've seen something fundamentally new in a launch."

So why is this particular launch so important? O’Meara says it’s all about seeing something new from NASA. “It’s going to be the first time in a long time that I’ve seen something fundamentally new in a launch. I have watched all of the shuttle launches … but this is the first time I, personally, will see NASA doing something really new that they haven’t [done before], a brand new craft being launched. I was too young to remember the days of testing the shuttle with enterprise. That’s why it’s personally exciting for me. To see them try out a fundamentally new piece of hardware and see how it goes,” O’Meara says.

Although exciting for scientists, O’Meara explains that this launch is also important for our society as a whole, especially younger generations. “I went into science because back when I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut. I think so many kids and adults, really anybody who sees what NASA does and witnesses the human part of space flight and space exploration, gets really excited about it,” O’Meara says. He sees this launch as a representation of human exploration and a large step to help further the fundamental need our culture has for exploring new territory.

"I went into science because back when I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut. I think so many kids and adults, really anybody who sees what NASA does and witnesses the human part of space flight and space exploration, gets really excited about it."

O’Meara is hosting a launch party at St. Mike’s on Friday, Dec. 5, starting at 6 a.m. He’ll have the live stream playing until splash down around 11:30 a.m. and will be answering any questions people have during the launch. The first few hundred people to arrive will receive paper craft models of Orion, courtesy of NASA. Learn more about the launch party on St. Mike’s website.

Update 10 a.m. Thursday, Dec. 4 This post has been corrected to reflect the fact that the launch has been rescheduled from Thursday, Dec. 4 at 7 a.m. to Friday, Dec. 5 at 7 a.m.

Ric was a producer for Vermont Edition and host of the VPR Cafe.
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