CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA's new Orion spacecraft made a bull's-eye splashdown in the Pacific on Friday following a dramatic test flight that took it to a zenith height of 3,600 miles and ushered in a new era of human exploration aiming for Mars.
"There's your new spacecraft, America," Mission Control commentator Rob Navias said as the Orion capsule neared the water.
NASA said it hopes the $370 million unmanned test flight will launch a new era of deep-space exploration.
"We're NASA. We're supposed to do exploration. We're supposed to the hard things, and today we did a really hard thing," said retired NASA astronaut Col. Cady Colman.
After a 24-hour delay, Orion blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Friday morning atop a Delta IV heavy rocket.
During its 4 ½ hour flight, Orion soared 3,600 miles above the Earth, which is past the International Space Station, which Coleman called home for six months.
"It's a big deal to test these systems. Those 1,200 sensors that are in that capsule, they represent me, they represent my crew, people that we want to keep safe on the big missions," said Coleman.
The cone-shaped spacecraft went through a trial by fire as the temperature rose to as high as 4,000 degrees during its descent.
Coleman, who has been through a similar experience on her return from the International Space Station, described what it is like.
"There are pieces of the aircraft on fire going by you. It's a pretty exciting thing. Then slow down, slow down, slow down with the parachutes," said Coleman.
U.S. Navy and Patrick Air Force Base personnel retrieved the capsule shortly after it splashed down.
"They've rehearsed for this for the last 18 months. We've done several at-sea trials to validate our recovery procedure," said the commander of 45th Operations Group Detachment 3, Lt. Col. Mike McClure.
Technicians will spend weeks poring over and analyzing the data collected by more than 12,000 sensors to determine how Orion performed.
They think it went well.
"The ship flew extremely, extremely well, and the flight operations in Houston only had to interact a couple of times," Orion program manager Mike Hawes said.
Many are hoping that Orion will lead to the way to trips to destinations like an asteroid or Mars.
"We as a species are meant to push human presence into the solar system, and this is a first step to start to do that," NASA Associate Administrator William Gerstenmaier said.
Thursday's launch attempt was foiled by wind and balky valves.
WFTV
