NASA astronaut Rex Walheim excited about Orion test flight

December’s first orbital test flight of NASA’s Orion crew capsule was almost perfect, but engineers are carefully analyzing 600 gigabytes of data recorded on the spacecraft’s trip 3,600 miles into space to see how future missions to an asteroid and Mars could be improved.

United Launch Alliance recently raised a Delta 4-Heavy rocket, one of four left in the company’s backlog, vertical on its launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in preparation for liftoff with a top secret U.S. government spy satellite at the end of April.

This is the launch highlights reel from United Launch Alliance of the Delta 4 rocket carrying the seventh satellite for the Air Force’s Wideband Global SATCOM constellation.