NASA launch to test human Mars mission capsule next month Ready to go: Part of NASA's Orion spacecraft is prepared for its first flight at the Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Washington: With memories still fresh of two commercial space flight accidents in the past 10 days, NASA is readying its first test flight of the Orion spacecraft that could one day carry humans to Mars. No one will be on board when Orion launches next month from Cape Canaveral in Florida, but the test will involve more than $US370 million ($400 million) in rocket equipment and hardware. That price tag does not include the cost of building the lolly-shaped Orion multi-purpose crew vehicle, built by Lockheed Martin to carry people into deep space. Space traveller: The Orion multi-purpose crew vehicle, which could carry humans to Mars, is scheduled to launch atop a rocket. The test mission, known as EFT-1, is scheduled to blast off on December 4 at 7.05am local time from a NASA launch pad at Kennedy Space Centre. It aims to end with an ocean splashdown about 4½ hours later. "EFT-1 is absolutely the biggest thing that this agency is going to do this year," said William Hill, NASA deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development. This is really our first step on our journey to Mars. The test flight begins with the lift-off of the United Launch Alliance Delta IV heavy rocket, marking the eighth launch of that particular rocket system. The rocket will be strapped with two boosters offering 301,000 kilograms of thrust each, said Ron Fortson, ULA director of mission management. The boosters are more powerful than those developed for the space shuttle, the 30-year NASA program that ended in 2011. Mr Hill said the rocket does not share any of the same components that were involved in the October 28 failure of an Orbital Sciences Antares rocket that exploded shortly after launch on what was to be a supply mission to the International Space Station. That blast cost Orbital more than $US200 million, but took no lives. It was followed on Friday by a fatal crash of Virgin's pioneering tourist-carrying spacecraft SpaceShipTwo, killing one of its two pilots. "In the space business we are one big family and when someone has a failure we all feel it," Hill said. Mark Geyer, Orion Program manager, said the accidents do not raise particular concern among his team for the upcoming launch, however. "It just reminds of the risks we already understood," Mr Geyer told reporters. Mr Geyer described the mission as "basically a compilation of what I would say are the riskiest events that we are going to see when we fly people." After launch comes a complex process including 17 different separation events, as the vehicle jettisons rocket fairings, the abort system and the space capsule itself. Orion will then fly two orbits around the earth, first a low lap followed by a second reaching a height of 5800 kilometres, or 15 times higher than the orbit of the International Space Station. When Orion makes its plunge back to earth, engineers will be closely watching the deployment of parachutes that slow the capsule from a speed of 483 kilometres per hour to 32 kilometres per hour. Finally, about four hours after launch comes the splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, about 965 kilometres south-west of San Diego, California, where navy divers will brave what are expected to be high seas to retrieve the spacecraft.