New River4, new console app. I need to think about how this relates to my installation of River4.#
NASA: "NASA marked a critical step on the journey to Mars with its Orion spacecraft during a roaring liftoff into the dawn sky over eastern Florida on Friday, Dec. 5, 2014, aboard a Delta IV Heavy rocket."#
Orion is the newest spacecraft built by NASA to carry humans in to space, and the plan is for it to fly humans to Mars. Today's test flight involves a couple of orbits around the earth, including passing through the Van Allen radiation belt, and will splash down in the Pacific ocean later today. Total planned mission time is 4.5 hours. One of the more interesting aspects of the mission is that Orion will go beyond low earth orbit, which will be the first spacecraft to do so since the Apollo missions more than forty years ago.#
Flickr: NASA Orion Spacecraft's Photostream.#
Note to self: when watching a launch, use the NASA Public Ustream feed rather than NASA.TV, which went down 4 second prior to the Orion launch. Although I am seeing reports the launch cut off on Ustream too. Fortunately, NASA re-ran the launches, from all the different cameras, about thirty minutes after launch.#