Photos: One more look at Orion’s launch

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.

The United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket lifts off with NASA’s Orion ship on its inaugural space flight test at 7:05 a.m. EST Dec. 5 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Complex 37.

A model of NASA’s Orion spacecraft, in development to loft astronaut crews into deep space, was dropped from a U.S. Air Force cargo plane over Arizona on Wednesday in the latest in a series of tests to verify the capsule’s parachutes are up to the job of safely landing with humans on-board.