Video: Orion EFT-1 test flight ends with a splashdown in the Pacific

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.

President Trump’s fiscal 2020 budget request includes $21.02 billion for NASA, funding the agency’s ongoing efforts to develop commercial spacecraft and infrastructure in low-Earth orbit and to press ahead with construction and launch of the world’s most powerful rocket and the Orion crew ships that will carry astronauts back to the moon.

The pace of the European Space Agency’s development of a power and propulsion module for NASA’s Orion crew capsule will likely determine when an unpiloted test flight of the spaceship and its heavy-lift rocket will take off, NASA officials said last week.