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NASA's Orion capsule back at Kennedy Space Center

James Dean
FLORIDA TODAY
NASA’s Orion spacecraft returned to the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday, Dec. 18. The spacecraft flew to an altitude of 3,600 miles in space during a Dec. 5 flight test designed to stress many of the riskiest events Orion will see when it sends astronauts on future missions to an asteroid and on the journey to Mars.

NASA's first space-flown Orion capsule today arrived back at Kennedy Space Center, where it was assembled.

The spacecraft completed a 2,700-mile cross-country drive from San Diego that followed its Dec. 5 splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, at the end of a successful first test flight launched hours earlier from Cape Canaveral.

Orion is the spacecraft NASA is designing to carry astronauts beyond low Earth orbit again, to the area around the moon and possibly one day Mars.

The unmanned Exploration Flight Test-1 mission launched by a Delta IV Heavy rocket sent Orion to a peak altitude of 3,600 miles during a two-orbit, four-and-a-half-hour mission. Orion survived a 20,000-mph reentry through the atmosphere and deployed parachutes in preparation for the splashdown 600 miles southwest of San Diego.

"Orion's flight test was a critical step on our journey to send astronauts to explore deep space destinations," said Bill Hill, deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development at NASA Headquarters in Washington, in a statement. "We stressed Orion to help us evaluate its performance and validate our computer models and ground-based evaluations, and the information we gathered will help us improve Orion's design going forward."

NASA has invited media to see Orion Friday morning in its open shipping container, and we'll follow up then with more details on the spacecraft's return and what's next for the program.