NASA’s Orion spacecraft launched successfully atop a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket Dec. 5 at 7:05 a.m. EST from Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Orion’s Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1), is the first flight test for NASA’s new deep space capsule and is a critical step on NASA's journey to Mars. The 4.5 hour flight is scheduled to conclude with the splashdown of Orion in the Pacific Ocean.

Next step, Orion and the SLS.

Great post there.

Would it be better in the Science Forum ...

Great post there.

Would it be better in the Science Forum ...

I had to make do.

Burning 4744 pounds of propellant per second.

Awesome is a word used far too much, but here, it is totally apt.

Meanwhile, on the outer reaches of the solar system....

Sleepy space probe New Horizons awakens for close-up with Pluto

Three billion miles away from Earth, in an unchartered slice of our solar system, a small space probe is shaking off its deep sleep and getting ready to become the first spacecraft to visit Pluto and its moons.

It's the "beginning of the mission's primary objective: the exploration of Pluto and its many moons in 2015," said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado, in a NASA news release.

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft was launched on January 19, 2006. It's down to the final 162 million miles of its journey and will arrive July 14, 2015. New Horizons has had 18 hibernation periods totaling 1,873 days to save wear and tear on its components. This was its last nap.

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/12/07/tech/innovation/new-horizons-space-probe-pluto/