WASHINGTON: National Aeronautics and Space Administration has said that its new astronaut mission may not launched until 2023.
A test flight of Orion with humans on board had previously been fixed in for 2021, but the officials said that were not confident to launch the mission on time.
Development difficulties “historically pop up”, meaning delays to the programme were a possibility, they told reporters during a teleconference.
NASA officials told reporter that probably the program would be delayed due to the development difficulties.
An Orion test capsule flew an unmanned mission in December last year.
It was a near-flawless outing, circling a few thousand kilometres above the Earth, but the capsule did not use the rocket for which it has been designed. This is a huge vehicle, also still in development, known as the Space Launch System (SLS).
More powerful than the Apollo programme’s Saturn V, the SLS is due to make its debut with Orion – again in an un-crewed configuration – in late 2018.
Only after that will the pair be prepared for a test flight with astronauts, possibly taking them on a trip around the back of the Moon.
NASA had been working towards a “not before” date of August 2021 for this mission, known as EM-2.
But a review of past progress and an assessment of future challenges has now prompted managers to change the target to a “no later than” April 2023.
