Soon a rocket will blast into orbit from the Space Coast, taking with it a spacecraft poised to be the pre-cursor to NASA's long duration missions to outer space.

Exploration Flight Test 1, or EFT-1, will test Orion, putting the capsule through the dangers of deep space exploration. That includes a "trial by fire" of the largest heat shield ever built.

Orion sits on top of a Delta IV Heavy rocket. The rocket, along with three rocket boosters will produce nearly 700,000 pounds of thrust -- enough to get the 78,000-pound capsule to orbit from Space Launch Complex 37 at the Cape Canaveral AFS.

For ULA, their part of the test is critical.

"It doesn't really do any good if we don't put them where they want to be. That's really what it's all about," said Ron Fortson with United Launch Alliance.

The spacecraft is made up of three parts.

The crew module, able to hold four astronauts and safely transporting them from launch all the way through landing and recovery.

The service module provides in space propulsion, and also water, oxygen and nitrogen to give the crew a living environment and carry cargo.

And finally the launch abort system -- key to pulling the crew to safety and make a safe landing in an emergency during liftoff.

Mission managers said they want to find out potential problems during the test flight.

"We want to find things that are beyond our expertise, so we can learn and fix it before we put people on board," said Mark Geyer, Orion Program Manager.

Orion will travel 3600 miles into orbit and endure 4,000 degrees of atmosphere as it comes back to Earth at 20,000 miles per hour.

The heat shield will also get a big test. It's the largest heat shield in history -- bigger than those on the Apollo capsules.

All part of a test to make it safe for people to travel to deep space in the coming decades.

And in the coming years, NASA's SLS rocket will be ready for flight -- it will be the largest ever built -- launching people on the Orion capsule to places like an asteroid or Mars.

Weather has a 40 percent chance of impacting the Orion launch Thursday. the launch window opens at 7:05 a.m. and runs until 9:35 a.m.

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Press Kit: About the Mission