NASA astronaut Rex Walheim excited about Orion test flight

The United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket fired away from Cape Canaveral at 1:51 p.m. EDT today to deploy a covert surveillance satellite for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office.

A U.S. Navy transport ship carrying NASA’s first space-worthy Orion capsule arrived Monday in San Diego, where ground crews will offload the spacecraft for shipment back to its home port at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Engineers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center tasked with overseeing launches of scientific satellites and interplanetary probes will be responsible later this year for ensuring six major missions safely get into space over a span of a little more than six months, beginning with the launch of NOAA’s new GOES-S weather observatory on an Atlas 5 rocket March 1.