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 "It's hard to have a better day than today," NASA's Orion capsule
program manager Mark Geyer told reporters after landing.
The cone-shaped capsule blasted off aboard a Delta 4 Heavy rocket,
the biggest in the U.S. fleet, just after dawn from Cape Canaveral
Air Force Station in Florida. Three hours later, it reached peak
altitude of 3,604 miles (5,800 km) above the planet, a prelude to
the most challenging part of the flight, a 20,000-mph (32,000 km/h)
dive back to Earth.
Orion survived a searing plunge through the atmosphere, heating up
to 4,000 degree Fahrenheit (2,200 degree Celsius) - twice as hot as
molten lava - and experiencing gravitational forces eight times
stronger than Earth's.
 Over the next few minutes, a total of 11 parachutes deployed to slow
Orion's descent, including three gigantic main chutes that guided
the spaceship to a 20-mph (32 km/h) splashdown 630 miles (1,014 km)
southwest of San Diego, California, at 11:29 a.m. EST (11:29 EST).
Details of the spaceship’s performance, especially how it weathered
surges of radiation as it passed through the lower Van Allen
radiation belt, will come after data recorded by more than 1,200
onboard sensors is retrieved and analyzed.
"I'm sure we’re going to find some very interesting things," Geyer
said.
The point of the flight, which cost NASA about $375 million, was to
verify that Orion's 16.5-foot (5-meter) diameter heat shield,
parachutes, avionics and other equipment would work as designed
prior to astronauts flying aboard.
NASA has been developing Orion, along with a new heavy-lift rocket,
for more than eight years. The design of the rocket has changed,
leaving Orion sole survivor of the canceled Constellation lunar
exploration program to become the centerpiece of a new human space
initiative intended to fly crews to Mars.
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NASA has spent more than $9 billion developing Orion, which will
make a second test flight, also without crew, in about four years.
A third mission, expected around 2021, will include two astronauts
on a flight that will send the capsule high around the moon. Since
the end of the Apollo moon program in 1972, astronauts have flown
only a few hundred miles above Earth.
"We've... finally done something for the first time for our
generation. It's a good day," said Mike Hawes, Orion program manager
with NASA prime contractor Lockheed Martin.
Orion's debut flight originally had been slated for Thursday but a
problem with the rocket, built and flown by United Launch Alliance,
a partnership of Lockheed and Boeing Co, delayed the launch one day.
(Editing by Bernard Orr)
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