Orion Spacecraft of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is a space capsule intended to take astronauts to low Earth orbit and beyond that. Now, the United States space agency announced that the spacecraft will not be able to take astronauts to space until 2023.

Before this, the capsule was intended to take astronauts to space in 2021, but NASA said the mission could take some more time before the launch. While talking to reporters, the space agency's officials said that due to some development difficulties, there could be future delays to the programme.

In December last year, NASA successfully tested unmanned Orion capsule. The unmanned spacecraft flew a few thousand kilometres above the surface of earth. The test was successful, but it didn't use the rocket that the agency has designed for it.

The space agency was planning to launch the mission in 2012, but after a review, managers decided to change the target date to April 2023. If everything goes as per the agency's plan, the mission will be launched in 2023.

Robert Lightfoot, associate administrator at the space agency, said, "Right now we're not seeing any issues in those areas, but we have to account for those because we've got a lot of runway in front of us before we get there and those things could pop up".

Orion spacecraft is intended to be a beyond earth-orbit system. According to NASA, the spacecraft will be able take astronauts to destinations like the moon, Mars and asteroids.