Orion spacecraft lift off delayed

The US spacecraft Orion could not depart on its maiden voyage as planned on Thursday, with the third and final countdown halted with 3 minutes and 9 seconds on the clock due to a valve in the rocket that failed to close on command.

"Despite the valiant attempts of the launch team and mission managers around the country, we basically ran out of time in trying to troubleshoot," NASA spokesman Mike Curie said.

The next window for a possible lift off from Cape Canaveral in Florida opens at 07:05 a.m. local time (1205 UTC/GMT) on Friday, and should last around 150 minutes.

The mission has been billed as NASA's first step towards a manned flight to the Red Planet, although no crew will be on board the four-and-a-half hour test flight.

Momentous milestone

The Delta IV Heavy rocket's 5,800-kilometer (3,604-mile) journey has been compared to other momentous milestones in human space flight, including the first Apollo launch in 1961 and the first launch of the space shuttle in 1981.

"We haven't had this feeling in a while, 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.

The rocket, built by United Launch Alliance, is designed to fit four people at a time and could serve future missions, including a trip to lasso an asteroid and a journey to Mars by the 2030s.

msh/jr (AFP, AP, dpa)