Private spaceflight took one giant step forward this week when the Tycho Brahe craft lifted off atop the HEAT-1X rocket engine Friday (pictured) from a platform in the Baltic Sea.

当第谷·布拉赫号飞船周五越过热火- 1x号火箭发动机头顶，从波罗的海的一个平台上升空(如图)，私人太空飞行本周向前迈出了一大步。

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The rocket launch is NASA? S first suborbital test of the new Ares I booster to launch astronauts to space aboard its shuttle successor, the Orion craft.

这次发射是NASA新型火箭的第一次亚轨道飞行测试，成熟后的战神I号将替代航天飞机，搭载猎户太空舱进行载人航天的任务。

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The rocket will shoot the craft into the trans-lunar orbit, after which the satellite is expected to reach the Moon in about five days.

该火箭将把这个飞行器送入环月轨道，此后该卫星有望于五天后抵达月球。

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Jeff Greason, the president of XCOR Aerospace, a company that makes rocket engines for suborbital craft, worries that the X Prize, with its attached conditions, may not in practice lead to the right sort of craft being built.

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It marks his first space venture since the partnership with Rutan and his colleagues to build the prize-winning SpaceShipOne rocket plane, which became the first privately developed craft to reach outer space in 2004.

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Flying at roughly 30, 000 feet, the craft would climb sharply just as it released the rocket, which would use a cluster of four or five engines to boost itself into orbit.

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