NASA Administrator speaks about Orion test flight

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft made a touch and go landing on asteroid Bennu at 6:12 p.m. EDT (2212 GMT) Tuesday. The craft aimed to collect samples from the asteroid’s gravely surface for return to Earth in 2023 for scientists to search for clues about the origins and evolution of the solar system.

United Launch Alliance called off the planned liftoff of a Delta 4-Heavy rocket and a classified National Reconnaissance Office spy satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Wednesday after indications of elevated hydrogen concentrations around one of the launcher’s main engines. Three previous launch attempts were scrubbed by technical concerns and bad weather.

The first piloted flight of NASA’s Orion space capsule, a vehicle designed to carry astronauts away from Earth for the first time in two generations, may slip from 2021 to 2023, agency officials said Wednesday.