In May, NASA’s Langley Research Center received Orion’s heat shield from December’s Exploration Flight Test, and will be integrating it into a crew module mockup and conducting several drop tests to simulate ocean landings.

Using test dummies and hundreds of sensors, NASA engineers will drop the heat shield and module into Langley’s Hydro Impact Basin eight times in order to determine how water landings will influence Orion. The tests are set to be conducted in in the spring of 2016.

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Read more about Orion here.