Video: Onboard camera captures Orion capsule return to Earth

The hatch issue caused NASA to modify its prelaunch preparations within the Vehicle Assembly Building but it continues to target an early February launch of the mission to carry four astronauts on a loop around the Moon.

On its second flight, SpaceX’s mammoth Falcon Heavy rocket hurled an Arabsat communications satellite the size of a school bus nearly one-quarter the way to the moon Thursday, days after NASA’s administrator identified the privately-developed rocket as a backup to the agency’s behind-schedule Space Launch System for sending astronauts back to the lunar surface.

NASA’s heavy-lifting mega-rocket and its ground support systems at Kennedy Space Center in Florida will not be ready for launches until at least mid-2018, even with extra funding approved by Congress, the space agency’s senior human spaceflight official told lawmakers.