Americas new Orion deep space exploration vehicle was launched from the Kennedy Space Center today atop the Delta IV Heavy rocket! The Orion spacecraft is a capsule design similar to the Apollo spacecraft in shape while obviously much more advanced. This unmanned test flight will orbit the Earth twice before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean about four hours after launch. Orions first manned deep space mission is a planned landing on an asteroid in 2021, with the long term goal of land man on Mars sometime in the 2030s.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Dec 2014 14:14:09 +0000