NASA will put on display the artifacts from its on-going project to create new spacecraft, named Orion, which will allow astronauts to fly beyond low Earth orbit. The artifacts will be exhibited at Space Center Houston to provide a planned glimpse of NASA's ‘Journey to Mars’ project.

The artifacts that will be displayed are a full-scale engineering mockup of the Orion spacecraft, a primary parachute that was used during an atmospheric drop test and a United States flag which flew during the new capsule’s first orbital test flight.

"The 'Journey to Mars' exhibit will be highly interactive and allow visitors to enter a Mars portal to discover technologies that will allow us to go further than we ever have before”, said Richard Allen, President and CEO of Space Center Houston, during a presentation on December 16.

The Orion spacecraft on display, developed by Lockheed Martin, was created to examine the activities of crew members inside the capsule. The displayed parachute is a model of the three primary canopies, which will be used to lower the spacecraft to a secure ocean splashdown following the completion of the mission. The exhibition will also have on display an artifact from Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) from January 2016. EFT-1 is the first orbital spaceflight which was launched on December 5 2014.

The uncrewed Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1) is the next space flight of Orion that will be launched into a distant retrograde orbit around the moon in 2018. Orion’s Exploration Mission-2 (EM-2), which is expected to be launched by 2023, will be the first Orion flight to have astronauts.