Data from the Orion flight test—recorded at much higher rates than the normal 1-Hz used operationally so engineers can pinpoint the changes in loads and other factors during the flight—will be used to validate models and improve designs.

Modular satellite assembled from multiple identical cells will rideshare into orbit in 2015.

"We knew that Rosetta's in situ analysis of the comet was always going to throw up surprises...," said Matt Taylor, ESA's Rosetta project scientist.

Orbital says a re-engined Antares rocket will conduct flights to the ISS for NASA from the company's Wallops Island launch site on Virginia's eastern shore in early 2016

Khrunichev says the heavy-lifter has been undergoing pad tests at Plesetsk Cosmodrome since mid-November

NASA’s new Orion crew capsule flew its first test in space with clocklike precision Friday, using two unmanned orbits that took it deeper into space than any human spacecraft has gone since Apollo 17, and then achieved a bull’s-eye splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

"Every system on the spacecraft functioned by the book -- from start to finish," NASA's Rob Navias reported from Mission Control

"It was just magnificent, a dawn launch," said NASA astronaut Rex Walheim, who flew aboard NASA's final space shuttle mission, STS-135, in July 2011. "I'd love to fly on Orion."