Parachutes for the key test of the next NASA flagship passage (Photo)

The parachutes that will slow down NASA's Orion capsule as it descends to Earth received a major test last week.

The Parachute System Orion was deployed as planned miles [106kilometers] on July 12th at the USArmyProvingGround in YumaArizona "TheNASAresponsiblewaswritteninunlabellingreverse (Wednesday) (July18)" Thedataofthesummarydiscussedatthesummaryofthelightinghighlights NASA engineers to certify Orion parachutes for missions with astronauts "

The last of these eight tests is scheduled for September, when the chutes will fly with a capsule that looks a lot like Orion, officials said. (Space capsule Orion: NASA's next spacecraft (Photos)]

NASA is developing Orion to help astronauts travel to far-flung destinations such as the Moon and Mars. stolen in space once: in December 2014, it launched a mission in Earth orbit called Exploration Flight Test-1. This mission ended after 4 hours and two laps around the Earth, with a Successful splash of parachuting in the Pacific Ocean off the south coast of California.

The next Orion Spacecraft is another unidentified test. 1), which will send the craft on a three-week trip around the moon. NASA plans to launch EM-1 – which will also be the inaugural flight of NASA's new Space Launch System (SLS) – by June 2020, and possibly as early as December 2019.

After that will come Exploration Mission-2 (EM-2), the first crewed flight of the Orion-SLS system. EM-2, which is scheduled to take off in 2023, will launch four astronauts on a lunar mission

The Orion parachute system includes 11 individual chutes – "three advanced parachutes, two parachutes, three pilot parachutes and three main parachutes that will reduce the speed of the capsule after reentry to support a safe landing in the ocean, "writes the same release from NASA

.Each main parachute reaches a diameter of 116 feet (35 meters) when they are deployed in the Earth's atmosphere, they added. But all this material is packed in a container the size of a large suitcase for loading on board Orion In its compressed configuration (which is obtained using hydraulic presses, baking and vacuum sealing), each main chute has a density of about 40 pounds per cubic foot (640 kilograms ograms per cubic meter) – about the same as a piece of oak wood, said NASA officials.

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