CEV Will Be Able To Land On Land, Or Water
NASA's next manned spacecraft, the Orion, will parachute to the
ground in the western United States at the end of its missions,
much as Russia's Soyuz space capsules (and China's similar Shenzhou
capsules) do today. Orion, however, will also have the ability to
land in the ocean in the case of a launch failure, similar to the
landings used during the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions... and
that's an area many NASA engineers aren't as familiar
with as they'd like to be.