Here's What An Astronaut Will See While Spiraling 20,000 Mph Through The Earth's Atmosphere
(CBS SF) -- NASA released new video Friday capturing the intense conditions the Orion spacecraft and the astronauts it carries will endure as they return from deep space on a journey destined for Mars.
It's among the first data to be removed from Orion following it's unmanned Dec. 5 flight test. The video begins 10 minutes before Orion's 11:29 a.m. splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, just as the spacecraft was beginning to enter into the Earth's atmosphere.
Two minutes into the video, the footage shows the plasma created by the atmosphere running against Orion's heat shield, with the scene rapidly changing colors from white to yellow to lavender to magenta as the temperature increased to nearly 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Minutes late, Orion emerges safely on the other side, with parachutes slowing it down to a safe 20 mph for landing.
The spacecraft traveled 3,600 miles above earth on its first 4.5-hour flight test -- further than any spacecraft built for humans has been in more than 40 years.