Photos: Delta 4-Heavy with Orion on eve of launch

NASA and industry teams at Cape Canaveral launched an Orion capsule on a three-minute atmospheric test flight Tuesday to prove the spaceship’s ability to escape from an exploding rocket during launch, demonstrating a key safety feature before astronauts ride the vehicle into deep space. Liftoff occurred at 7 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT).

NASA officials released a nearly five-year, $28 billion plan Monday to return astronauts to the surface of the moon before the end of 2024, but the agency’s administrator said the “aggressive” timeline set by the Trump administration last year hinges on Congress approving $3.2 billion in the next few months to kick-start development of new human-rated lunar landers.

A 6.6-million-pound Apollo-era crawler-transporter rolled up the ramp to pad 38B on Tuesday and was positioned directly under the 3.5-million-pound Space Launch System rocket and its 11.3-million-pound mobile launch platform.