Live coverage: Orion lands in Pacific

As a United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket prepares to carry NASA’s Orion spaceship on its first orbital flight test, we look back at the seven previous Heavy launches.

The budget proposal coming from the White House would also reduce spending on the International Space Station program by more than $500 million.

A Japanese Epsilon rocket launched Tuesday from the Uchinoura Space Center, a shoreline spaceport on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, with a space weather research probe to study phenomena inside the turbulent Van Allen radiation belts. Liftoff of the 85-foot-tall rocket occurred at 1100 GMT (6 a.m. EST).