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NASA prepares Orion test flight

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Orion spacecraft is built to take humans farther than they have ever gone before, with its first test flight scheduled to launch on December 4th. Courtesy NASA.

Washington: As the last man to walk on the Moon prepared to fly back to Earth in 1972, astronaut Eugene Cernan echoed the words of the first, pledging with Neil-Armstrong-like grandiosity that "we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind". He later predicted that humans would reach Mars by the end of the 20th century.

Now Cernan admits: "I was a little off on my timing."

Forty-two years after Cernan's Apollo 17 mission touched down, not a single person has walked on the Moon. A Mars landing is surely decades away, at best. And not a single space ship designed to carry astronauts has left low Earth orbit.

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NASA prepares to test Orion, the spaceship that could take US to Mars