It's the biggest countdown for NASA since the shuttle era ended in 2011. The space agency's new Orion spacecraft is scheduled to lift off on an uncrewed test flight at 7:05 a.m. ET Thursday from Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. "We haven't had this feeling in awhile, since the end of the shuttle program," Mike Sarafin, Orion flight director at Johnson Space Center, said in a preflight briefing on Wednesday. He said it's the beginning of something new: exploring deep space. Orion looks like a throwback to the Apollo era, but it is roomier and designed to go far beyond the moon: to an asteroid and eventually to Mars.
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New spaceship Orion is "go" for test flight
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Launch is set for 7 a.m. ET Thursday
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Orion will orbit Earth twice and will splash down in the Pacific
Orion's crew module is 16.5 feet in diameter and @placeholder was 12.8 feet in diameter, NASA said.
If the weather cooperates, @placeholder said a drone will provide a live video feed of the splashdown.