December will mark a new phase in the development of the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle.(CEV) This is when engineers from NASA and the USAF's Arnold Engineering Development Center will begin conducting aerothermal tests on new materials to use as the CEV's heat shields.
Another goal of these tests is to collect data at Mach 8 and Mach 10 from the CEV models surface. These data are then used to update NASA's fluid dynamics data on the Orion project.
Orion although larger than the Apollo spacecraft were built with the same structure details in mind. While they look almost completely the same the Orion heat shields will face far more heating and shear than did any of the Apollo spacecraft.
The Orion is planned to be used for missions to the International Space Station by 2014, and to the moon by 2020.
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