Wind gusts delay NASA’s deep space capsule Orion launch
5 Dec 2014 11:40 PM GMT
The first test launch of NASA’s new deep space capsule, Orion, was delayed on Thursday due to wind gusts, technical issues with the rocket and a misplaced boat off the coast. The capsule is meant to carry humans to an asteroid or Mars in the coming years. No astronauts were on board the spacecraft, poised atop a Delta IV Heavy rocket at Cape Canaveral, now set to blast off at 8:26 am, an hour and 21 minutes after the initial target time.
Tourists and space enthusiasts lined the area known as Florida’s Space Coast to see the take-off at sunrise, and 27,000 guests were at the Kennedy Space Center for a close-up look.The capsule’s four-and-a-half hour test flight is due to carry the spacecraft around the Earth twice before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.
The launch is the first of a US spacecraft meant to carry people into deep space in more than four decades, since the Apollo missions that brought men to the Moon. With no American vehicle to send humans to space since the space shuttle was retired in 2011, some at NASA said the Orion launch has re-energized the US space program, long constrained by government belt-tightening and forced to rely on costly rides aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft to reach the International Space Station in low-Earth orbit.
Tourists and space enthusiasts lined the area known as Florida’s Space Coast to see the take-off at sunrise, and 27,000 guests were at the Kennedy Space Center for a close-up look.The capsule’s four-and-a-half hour test flight is due to carry the spacecraft around the Earth twice before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.
The launch is the first of a US spacecraft meant to carry people into deep space in more than four decades, since the Apollo missions that brought men to the Moon. With no American vehicle to send humans to space since the space shuttle was retired in 2011, some at NASA said the Orion launch has re-energized the US space program, long constrained by government belt-tightening and forced to rely on costly rides aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft to reach the International Space Station in low-Earth orbit.
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