Orion's Main Parachutes One of Orion’s main parachutes from the Capsule Parachute Assembly System, or CPAS, is lowered into the water at the Neutral Buoyancy Lab (NBL) at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The Orion CPAS team joined the Exploration Flight Test 1 recovery team and representatives of the U.S. Navy to test recovery procedures for the Orion parachutes. The NBL is 202 feet in length, 102 feet in width, and 40 feet in depth (20 feet above ground level and 20 ft below) and holds 6.2 million gallons of water. In addition to the current parachute recovery test the facility has been used by the Orion program to test the Crew Module Uprighting system on a full size Orion mockup known as PORT. Image Credit: NASA/James Blair

One of Orion’s main parachutes from the Capsule Parachute Assembly System, or CPAS, is lowered into the water at the Neutral Buoyancy Lab (NBL) at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The Orion CPAS team joined the Exploration Flight Test 1 recovery team and representatives of the U.S. Navy to test recovery procedures for the Orion parachutes.

The NBL is 202 feet in length, 102 feet in width, and 40 feet in depth (20 feet above ground level and 20 ft below) and holds 6.2 million gallons of water. In addition to the current parachute recovery test the facility has been used by the Orion program to test the Crew Module Uprighting system on a full size Orion mockup known as PORT.

Image Credit: NASA/James Blair