NASA was scheduled to launch its Orion spacecraft for a test flight on Thursday morning, but a series of delays have forced the launch to be pushed back to Friday.
The Orion launch will be the first test of the spacecraft, which will take humans farther into space than ever before, including to Mars, starting in 2021 (and to Mars in the 2030s). The Exploration Flight Test 1 (EFT-1) will be four and a half hours long. It won't carry humans, though — the flight will "check critical systems that can't be fully tested on Earth, including the craft's heat shield and parachutes," NBC News reports.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
The best TV spy thrillersThe Week Recommends Brilliant espionage series, packed with plot twists to keep you hooked until the end
-
Ukraine-Russia: are both sides readying for nuclear war?Today's Big Question Putin changes doctrine to lower threshold for atomic weapons after Ukraine strikes with Western missiles
-
Hugh Corcoran and The Yellow Bittern: is the customer really always right?Talking Point A new London restaurant has caused controversy by complaining about customer eating habits
-
New DNA tests of Pompeii dead upend popular storiesSpeed Read An analysis of skeletal remains reveals that some Mount Vesuvius victims have been wrongly identified
-
NASA's Europa Clipper blasts off, seeking an oceanSpeed Read The ship is headed toward Jupiter on a yearslong journey
-
Detailed map of fly's brain holds clues to human mindSpeed Read This remarkable fruit fly brain analysis will aid in future human brain research
-
Blind people will listen to next week's total eclipseSpeed Read While they can't see the event, they can hear it with a device that translates the sky's brightness into music
-
Melting polar ice is messing with global timekeepingSpeed Read Ice loss caused by climate change is slowing the Earth's rotation
-
An amphibian that produces milk?speed read Caecilians, worm-like amphibians that live underground, produce a milk-like substance for their hatchlings
-
Jupiter's Europa has less oxygen than hopedspeed read Scientists say this makes it less likely that Jupiter's moon harbors life
-
Why February 29 is a leap daySpeed Read It all started with Julius Caesar
