Going without crew in that first test flight has been NASA’s plan all along.

(Steven Seipel/NASA)The first flight of NASA’s expensive new deep-space rocket is going to be delayed again, and it won’t have any astronauts aboard, the agency announced Friday.

[NASA considers adding two astronauts to rocket test flight]Phil Larson, the space policy adviser in the Obama White House, said of this new delay in the rocket schedule, “This is something that I think a lot of people saw coming.

[Trump, via NASA, has a new rocket.

That means it is unlikely NASA will launch astronauts on the SLS before 2022.

Dwarf planet located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter

referring to Update, May 17 at 10:o0 a.m. PT: This story has been updated to amend the location of the asteroid belt where Ceres is found.

The Dawn spacecraft captured the images used in the movie on April 29 from a position between the sun and Ceres and from a distance of about 12,000 miles (20,000 kilometers) away from the dwarf planet.

Enlarge Image NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDAWhile NASA’s Cassini mission at Saturn has been grabbing a lot of space headlines lately, the agency’s Dawn spacecraft continues its work at Ceres, a dwarf planet located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

NASA released a new animation on Tuesday showing Ceres rotating in fascinating fashion.

Dawn launched in 2007 and recently suffered a technical malfunction, but NASA reports the spacecraft is healthy and able to orient itself as needed.

referring to

Late last month, the U.S. Government Accountability Office warned that a delay was likely for the first SLS flight, crew or not.

The megarocket represents a robust foundation for ultimately moving human presence out into the solar system, Gerstenmaier said.

The test flight can be more dynamic, as NASA calls it, without a crew, and the lessons learned can help advance the next mission when people finally are on board.

In February at the request of the White House, NASA began studying the possibility of putting a crew on the first flight.

By MARCIA DUNNAP Aerospace WriterCAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) – NASA’s new megarocket will launch without astronauts on its test flight, now delayed until 2019 because of technical challenges, the space agency’s top leaders said Friday.

collected by :Irin Lilly