NASA’s First Orion Spacecraft set to arrive at the Kennedy Space Center

Next week on Monday, July 2nd, NASA will take delivery of the first space-bound Orion spacecraft to arrive at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The center will host a media event highlighting the arrival at 10AM Eastern on that day, which will also be broadcast live via NASA TV and the internet (watch it below).

The Orion spacecraft is NASA’s next generation spacecraft which will be used to carry astronauts farther into the solar system than ever before. Under the new NASA strategy, through partnerships with the agency, private companies like SpaceX and others will begin to take on routine missions to launch payloads to orbit and ferry supplies and astronauts to the International Space Station.

Under NASA’s new direction, Orion will be launched atop a heavy-lift rocket designed to provide an entirely new capability for human exploration beyond low Earth orbit. This heavy-launch capable Space Launch System (SLS), as it is called, is designed to be flexible for launching spacecraft for crew and cargo missions, enabling new missions of exploration and expand human presence across the solar system.

At the unveiling ceremony on Monday, a number of speakers will be on hand including, Florida’s congressional representative Senator Bill Nelson, himself a former NASA astronaut and advocate of the space program.

Other speakers will include: NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver, NASA Orion Program Manager Mark Geyer, NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Development Dan Dumbacher, NASA Space Launch System Spacecraft and Payload Integration Manager David Beaman, and NASA Ground Systems Development and Operations Program Manager Pepper Phillips

Points of discussion during the press conference will be the progress made to-date on final assembly and integration of the spacecraft. The first launch, Exploration Flight Test-1, will be an uncrewed mission currently scheduled for 2014. During the first test flight, Orion travel farther into space than any human spacecraft has gone in more than 40 years.

Watch live streaming video of the arrival of the Orion Spacecraft from NASA TV here

Live video from your Android device on Ustream