Video: Delta 4-Heavy tower rollback

NASA hopes to have a new leader for the agency’s human spaceflight directorate by the end of the year to replace Bill Gerstenmaier, who held the post for nearly 14 years before his reassignment in July amid the Trump administration’s push to land humans on the moon by 2024, a NASA official said Wednesday.

Take another look back at the Orion spaceship’s launch atop a Delta 4-Heavy rocket on Dec. 5 with this gallery of NASA and United Launch Alliance photos.

NASA astronaut Rex Walheim says the Orion EFT-1 test flight represents the opening of a new era for the space agency.