A crane lifts the Orion boilerplate test vehicle from a flatbed truck to lower at a warehouse.

A crane lifts the Orion boilerplate test vehicle from a flatbed truck to lower it to the ground at a warehouse at the Naval Base San Diego in California. The test vehicle is attached to the BTA handling fixture. The Ground Systems Development and Operations Program, Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Navy are evaluating the hardware and processes for preparing the Orion crew module for Exploration Flight Test-1, or EFT-1, for overland transport from the naval base to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Orion is the exploration spacecraft designed to carry astronauts to destinations not yet explored by humans, including an asteroid and Mars. It will have emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during space travel and provide safe re-entry from deep space return velocities. The first unpiloted test flight of the Orion is scheduled to launch later this year atop a Delta IV rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida to an altitude of 3,600 miles above the Earth's surface. The two-orbit, four-hour flight test will help engineers evaluate the systems critical to crew safety including the heat shield, parachute system and launch abort system. For more information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/orion. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett