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 A triple-booster Delta 4 Heavy rocket, built and flown by the
Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co joint venture known as United
Launch Alliance, was cleared for its planned launch from Cape
Canaveral Air Force Station at 7:05 a.m. EST (1205 GMT) Thursday,
NASA said on Wednesday.
Perched atop the rocket, the biggest in the U.S. fleet, is NASA'S
first Orion space capsule. It is due to make a 4-1/2-hour flight to
test its heat shield, parachutes and other systems needed to ferry
astronauts into deep space and return them safely to Earth.
Meteorologists predicted a 70 percent chance the weather will be
acceptable for liftoff on a launch that is part of the U.S. space
agency's plan to land humans on an asteroid sometime around 2025 and
on Mars about a decade later.
 “Tomorrow is a giant day,” NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden told
reporters at the launch pad on Wednesday. “For the first time in
more than 40 years this nation is going to launch a spacecraft
intended to carry humans beyond low-Earth orbit. That’s a big deal.”
NASA’s last human expedition beyond Earth was the final Apollo
mission to the moon in 1972.
Flying the capsule without a crew allows NASA to aggressively test
how well it fares beyond the protective environment of Earth’s
magnetic field and during a 20,000 mph (32,200 km/h) dive back into
the atmosphere.
The rocket will take Orion about 3,600 miles (5,800 km) into space,
some 15 times farther than where the International Space Station
flies, before it plunges back to Earth.
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Key events, such as the jettisoning of aerodynamic panels and launch
escape system and the deployment of parachutes, will be immediately
apparent. How Orion weathers other aspects of the flight will not be
known until engineers retrieve recorded data from more than 1,200
sensors aboard the ship.
If all goes as planned, Orion, built by Lockheed Martin, will splash
down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Mexico’s Baja California
peninsula. Two U.S. Navy ships and other vessels will be standing by
to retrieve the capsule.
(Reporting by Irene Klotz; Editing by Tom Brown)
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