Final work on NASA's newest manned spaceship, Orion, is underway. On Wednesday in Arizona, NASA successfully completed the most complex test for the spacecraft's parachute system to date, the 14^th in the series of tests carried out to "ensure crew and mission safety for our astronauts in the future," said Orion program manager Mark Geyer.

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Dropped from an altitude of 35,000 feet off a C-17 aircraft, the Orion landed safely using two sets of parachutes which, according to NASA officials, performed perfectly.

The Orion crew will run three more tests on the parachute system before its December spaceflight. The next test is scheduled in August.

Orion will launch in December for its first unmanned mission in preparation for carrying astronauts into deep space. Its future missions include journeying to Mars and beyond; the furthest any humans have ever gone.

Orion boasts some firsts in space technology. It is loaded with computers that can process 480 million instructions per second, the fastest ever sent into space, in addition to being equipped with the largest space shield ever built that can withstand temperatures near 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit or 2,200 degrees Celsius.

Orion "is built to take humans farther than they've ever gone before," NASA said. Come December, Orion will launch using Delta IV Heavy rocket which will carry it to an unprecedented 3,600 miles above the Earth, or about 16 times higher than the International Space Station's average altitude.

The spacecraft will orbit the Earth twice during it's 4 ½-hour flight and descend to Earth at 20,000 miles per hour into the Pacific Ocean.

According to Geyer, "Orion's flight test will provide us with important data that will help us test out systems and further refine the design so we can safely send humans far into the solar system to uncover new scientific discoveries on future missions."

In the future, scientists at NASA plan to send Orion into space with the Space Launch System, a heavy-lift rocket that will carry humans to deep destinations like asteroids and eventually Mars, Geyer said.

Tagsorion, orion spacecraft, NASA, manned spacecraft