NASA’s new Orion spacecraft now is at its launch pad after completing final journey in the early hours Wednesday. It arrived at Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 0307 EST, where the spacecraft then was lifted onto a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket in preparation for its first trip to space.
The History And Logic Behind NASA's New Deep Space Transportation System
In the wake of the loss of the Space Shuttle COLUMBIA as well as subsequent studies and commissions, the Bush administration decided that the United States needed to replace the Shuttle system with a new architecture that would take crews to the Moon and Mars and would also have the capability to safely abort during all phases of boosted flight. A key in that architecture was a spacecraft that NASA named “Orion.”
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