December 5, 2014
Mariah Timms
News Writer
Cape Canaveral, Florida
NASA launched the new Orion spacecraft for a test orbit Friday from Cape Canaveral. The flight was a 4 ½ hour, uncrewed flight that made two orbits of the earth before landing. The flight was the farthest any craft designed for human flight has gone from the earth since the Apollo 17 mission to the moon in 1972. The craft lifted off at 7:05 a.m. ET via the Delta IV Heavy rocket and entered low-Earth orbit just under 20 minutes later. The Orion capsule dropped down as planned into the Pacific Ocean near Baja California at 11:29 a.m. ET.
