CAPE CANAVERAL: The Orion spacecraft, designed to carry humans farther in deep space than ever before, is poised to blast off Thursday in what NASA hailed as a first step in mankind's journey to Mars.
No astronauts will be on board the capsule when it launches aboard the United States' largest rocket, the Delta IV Heavy made by United Launch Alliance, but engineers will be keenly watching to see how it performs during the four-and-a-half hour flight.
The launch marks the first of a US spacecraft meant to carry people into deep space since the Apollo missions that brought men to the Moon in the 1960s and 1970s.
With no American vehicle to send humans to space since the space shuttle was retired in 2011, some at NASA said the Orion launch has re-energized the US space program, long constrained by government belt-tightening and forced to rely on costly rides aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft to reach the International Space Station in low-Earth orbit.
"We haven't had this feeling in awhile, since the end of the shuttle program, (of) launching an American spacecraft from America's soil and beginning something new," said Mike Sarafin, lead flight director at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
"While the feeling is familiar and the anticipation of flight is familiar, it is a new mission and there some things that I am sure we are going to learn tomorrow from this unmanned flight test that will enable us to fly humans into deep space."
Potential future missions for Orion, which is designed to fit four people at a time, include a trip to lasso an asteroid and a journey to Mars by the 2030s.
"Thursday is the beginning of that journey, testing key systems -- the riskiest systems I would say for Orion -- before we have any people on board," said Mark Geyer, program manager for Orion.
"This is the beginning of exploration," he added.
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