CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - America's most powerful rocket was fueled up once more on Friday to launch a robotic test version of NASA's Orion deep-space capsule on its first flight, a day after a series of snags forced a scrub of the first attempt.
The United Launch Alliance Delta 4 Heavy rocket's liftoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station had to be postponed on Thursday - at first due to gusty winds, and later due to a balky fuel valve.
The good news is that ULA resolved the fuel valve issue: 'We're proceeding toward launch,' the company said in a Twitter update. The bad news is that forecasters set the prospects for launch-worthy weather at only 40 percent, due to winds as well as the potential for rain and cumulus clouds.
The launch window is due to open at 7:05 a.m. ET and close at 9:44 a.m., just as it did on Thursday.
Orion is being designed to take astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid in the 2020s, and to Mars and its moons in the 2030s. For that reason, NASA portrays this week's test flight as a first step toward deep-space exploration. In fact, the mission is known as Exploration Flight Test 1, or EFT-1.
'I would describe it as the beginning of the Mars era,' NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said on NASA TV during Thursday's countdown.
If the heavy'-lift Delta rocket sends the cone-shaped Orion craft on its intended course, it will mark the first time since the Apollo 17 moon mission in 1972 that NASA has sent a vehicle that's being designed to carry humans beyond low Earth orbit.
Far-out trip
After Orion makes its first circuit around the planet, the rocket's upper stage would kick it into a second, highly eccentric orbit that loops as far as 3,600 miles from Earth. Then Orion would come screaming back into Earth's atmosphere at a speed of 20,000 mph - 80 percent of the velocity that a spacecraft returning from the moon would face.
This particular Orion is missing a lot of the components that would be needed for a crewed flight, and it won't be carrying humans. Instead, it's outfitted with more than 1,200 sensors to monitor how its communication and control systems deal with heightened radiation levels, how its heat shield handles re-entry temperatures that are expected to rise as high as 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and how its parachutes slow the craft down for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
Two Navy recovery ships, plus a complement of smaller boats and helicopters, are standing by 600 miles west of Baja California to pick up the capsule and bring it in to Naval Base San Diego. From there, Orion would be trucked cross-country, back to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Data collected during and after the 4.5-hour flight would be analyzed to help the Orion team prepare for the next uncrewed test flight in 2018. That flight would be launched by NASA's giant Space Launch System rocket, or SLS, which is currently under development. During the 2018 flight, known as Exploration Mission 1 or EM-1, Orion would fly around the moon and back.
The ride ahead
The first crewed Orion flight is scheduled for 2021, and that could involve sending astronauts around the moon for the first time since Apollo. Farther-out expeditions, including the trip to an asteroid and the buildup to Mars missions, would follow every year or so.
This week's test is being managed by Orion's prime contractor on NASA's behalf, at a cost of $370 million. Developing the Orion spacecraft costs NASA about $1 billion per year, said Mark Geyer, the space agency's Orion project manager. NASA estimates that work on the SLS rocket will cost roughly $7 billion between now and its first test flight in 2018.
NASA has not yet settled on the designs for the landers and space habitats that would be required for a Mars mission, but officials say they expect those components will be ready to go by the 2030s.
Critics have targeted the multibillion-dollar price tag for Orion and SLS, as well as the long development schedule and the anticipated flight schedule. 'Committing to Orion is committing to an Apollo-like replay, just as with SLS: Few people, infrequent and high cost,' space industry consultant Charles Lurio told NBC News in an email.
At the same time that NASA is funding the development of Orion and SLS, it's also supporting the commercial development of less expensive 'space taxis' that would carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station, starting in 2017 or so. In September, the agency set aside $6.8 billion to help SpaceX and Boeing build such space taxis.
SpaceX's billionaire founder, Elon Musk, has said his company's Dragon capsule could eventually be used for missions to Mars as well as for shorter flights.
First published December 5 2014, 1:25 AM
Alan Boyle
Alan Boyle is the science editor for NBC News Digital. He joined MSNBC.com at its inception in July 1996, and took on the science role in July 1997 with the landing of NASA's Mars Pathfinder probe. Boyle is responsible for coverage of science and space for NBCNews.com.Boyle joined NBCNews.com from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, where he was the foreign desk editor from 1987 to 1996. Boyle has won awards for science journalism from numerous organizations, including the National Academies, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Association of Science Writers. Boyle is the author of 'The Case for Pluto: How a Little Planet Made a Big Difference.' He lives in Bellevue, Wash.
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