NASA, America’s space agency, today launched a new vehicle for human space flight, its first for 33 years. Designed to replace the Space Shuttle, which was retired in 2011, the new Orion craft resembles a roomier version of the capsules that took humans to the Moon in the 1960s. Once a giant new rocket called the Space Launch System is ready, supposedly by 2018, Orion will ferry astronauts to the International Space Station and, after that, to an asteroid and (eventually) Mars. But both Orion and the SLS are late, and the asteroid-and-Mars plan follows a series of grand space-exploration schemes that all failed to get off the ground—leaving SpaceX, a private firm, to make the running, and making America embarrassingly reliant on Russia to carry its astronauts. So although this test flight will be uncrewed, much is riding on Orion.
Referred by: The Economist
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