Orion Test Flight In 2013?

Lockheed Martin, builder of the Orion space capsule, is looking at acquiring a Delta 4 Heavy rocket to launch a test flight of an unmanned Orion in 2013. The flight would look towards meeting NASA's goal of having an Orion ready by 2016.

In the test flight, Orion would be launched into a highly elliptical orbit, the apogee of which would be well into space. The point of that flight path would be to test the Orion's performance during re-entry at a speed that would approach that of an Orion returning from a lunar or deep space mission. Of course, NASA has no current plans to use Orion to go to the Moon, and the only deep space flight that has momentum is a manned flight to an asteroid in 2025. The future of NASA manned spaceflight, and of human spaceflight in general, however, is in a state of flux. Congress has its own ideas of where American astronauts should go next, other countries seem to be considering lunar missions, and there are also private possibilities. If LM had a human-rated spacecraft designed for deep space missions ready to fly soon, it might have more than NASA to service.