NASA’s Orion spacecraft was slated to leave Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida for a four and a half hour test flight at 7:05 a.m. Eastern time Thursday morning. However, several delays, including a boat moving into prohibited waters, windier-than-expected conditions and technical glitches, caused the agency to scrub today’s test flight. The decision was made five minutes before the launch window closed at 9:44 a.m. NASA said if it makes another attempt tomorrow morning, it would again aim for 7:05 a.m. Eastern time.

Though Orion didn’t have a crew this time, the launch was to mark NASA’s reentry into manned space travel and the beginning of the journey to send Americans to Mars.

NASA's Orion spacecraft awaiting launch on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2014. After some setbacks that caused several delays, NASA opted to cancel the launch for the day. (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Several factors postponed the launch. Initially, a boat strayed into the prohibited zone, though crews were able to quickly resolve that problem. Then winds picked up. Weather conditions were initially fine for launch, with temperatures hovering in the upper 60s and some light wind. Then cloudy, hazy conditions started to persist, and the wind picked up, with gusts leading to a second delay, according to weather.com meteorologist Linda Lam.

The third delay came when a liquid hydrogen fill-and-drain valve malfunctioned. “Despite the valiant attempts of the launch team and mission managers around the country, we basically ran out of time in trying to troubleshoot the last of the issues, which was a problem with the fill-and-drain valves,” one NASA representative noted.

Even with today’s setback, the Orion mission has lofty goals: “The inspiration is about getting people out into the solar system, exploring beyond lower Earth orbit,” Orion Program Manager Mark Geyer said yesterday during a pre-launch news conference.

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During this initial mission, Orion was to fly 3,600 miles above Earth, “far enough to encounter the high radiation zones that circle the planet and measure their effects on the inside of the spacecraft,” NASA wrote in a Dec. 2 blog post. During reentry, the heat shield was to “bear the brunt of scorching plasma as the spacecraft dives into the atmosphere at 20,000 mph before slowing for splashdown.” The spacecraft goes from 20,000 to 0 in just 11 minutes, one NASA administrator said.

Part of the point of today’s test flight was to truly test Orion’s capabilities and discover its limitations, Geyer said. “Unmanned tests are very important because … you want to push the vehicle very hard,” he said. “If there are things that are alluding us, things beyond what our models tell us but are the truth, then I want to learn that.”

Orion is still impressive in its magnitude. It’s designed to complete a 21-day mission carrying four people. (To get to the International Space Station takes four days, max.) Its heat shield can handle 1.5 times what that of previous spacecraft could handle. And because it would take much longer to get back to Earth in the case of an emergency — days compared to minutes — Orion is equipped to respond to much more.

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