Video: Orion flight preps

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.

Completing a 2,700-mile journey across the United States, America’s inaugural Orion spaceship arrived back home at the Kennedy Space Center on Thursday, just under two weeks after its trial by fire.

The Trump administration is requesting $25.2 billion for NASA in fiscal 2021, a 12 percent increase that includes $3.3 billion to kickstart development of a human-rated lander for the Artemis moon program. Nearly half of the budget request, $12.3 billion, is devoted to new and ongoing projects focused on the return to the moon and eventual flights to Mars.