Posted: Sat, Nov 19, 2022, 10:33 AM ET (1533 GMT)
NASA's Orion spacecraft is on its way to the Moon after a successful launch early Wednesday. The Space Launch System lifted off on its inaugural flight at 1:47 am EST (0647 GMT) from the Kennedy Space Center. The liftoff was delayed by more than 40 minutes to fix a leaky valve and a tracking radar. The SLS upper stage released Orion nearly two hours later after performing a translunar injection burn. Orion will fly a 25-day uncrewed mission called Artemis 1, going into a distant retrograde orbit around the moon before returning to Earth and splashing down off the California coast. The mission will demonstrate the performance of Orion ahead of the Artemis 2 crewed mission around the moon no earlier than 2024.
