NASA test of Orion capsule is successful

New York Times : A stray boat, high wind, and a sticky valve led to the scrubbing of yesterday’s attempted launch of NASA’s Orion spacecraft. Today there were no delays, and the launch and mission were completed without incident. Orion is NASA’s next manned spacecraft; it takes the place of the space shuttle in the US space program. The test flight, which began at 7:05am from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and was unmanned, was the first launch of the new craft. A capsule, Orion follows in the footsteps of the Apollo capsules of the 1960s. The craft was tested for safety during launch. During its four-hour flight, it completed two orbits of Earth. The first was a simple orbit, but the second took it 10 130 km away from Earth, farther than any other human-rated spacecraft since the last Apollo mission. It reached a maximum speed of nearly 32 000 kph, similar to the speeds it would reach on a return mission from the Moon or Mars. It then returned to Earth and had a successful reentry.