Live coverage: Orion lands in Pacific

Running a day late, a United Launch Alliance heavy-lift Delta 4 rocket thundered away from Cape Canaveral early Sunday, boosting NASA’s $1.5 billion Parker Solar Probe into space on a daring seven-year mission to “touch the sun” with repeated trips through the star’s blazing outer atmosphere.

A decade in the making, the core stage for NASA’s first Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket rolled into the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center Thursday to join up with twin solid rocket boosters and an Orion capsule for an unpiloted test flight around the moon.

NASA announced new delays for the Artemis Moon program at a news conference at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. The Artemis 2 mission to circle the Moon is now scheduled for 2026 and the first lunar landing is delayed to 2027.