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

NASA, Lockheed Martin and United Launch Alliance officials hold the L-2 day countdown status briefing following the launch readiness review on Tuesday, Dec. 2.

NASA is taking steps to rein in costs, emphasizing bonds with private sector companies, and signaling it might be open to a future where the agency’s flagship Orion deep space capsule and Space Launch System are no longer necessary to explore deep space, at least in their current forms.

One of the final pieces for the first test flight of NASA’s huge Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket recently arrived at the Kennedy Space Center, joining other elements already at the Florida spaceport awaiting shipment of the SLS core stage once it completes testing at a NASA facility in Mississippi.