Video: The launch of Orion

This will be…

The maiden flight of NASA’s Space Launch System, a heavy-lift human-rated rocket and one of the agency’s core programs, will likely not be ready for takeoff until 2020, officials said recently.

Reid Wiseman, a veteran U.S. Navy test pilot and former chief of NASA’s astronaut corps, will lead the four-person crew assigned to the Artemis 2 mission to carry people to the vicinity of the moon for the first time in more than 50 years. Wiseman says he views the crew’s job as making sure NASA’s Orion spacecraft is ready for more demanding missions later this decade to support moon landings and assembly of a space station called the Gateway in lunar orbit.