Orion capsule returns home to Kennedy Space Center

CAPE CANAVERAL – NASA's Orion capsule on Friday looked no worse for wear from its stealthy, cross-country road trip home from California, mostly across back roads under round-the-clock security.

"We treated this as kind of black ops," said Louie Garcia, the NASA ground operations manager who oversaw the eight-day convoy to Kennedy Space Center that followed Orion's first test flight, with the spacecraft still carrying toxic fuel.

"Basically the only people that knew who we were were some curious folks at truck stops or front desk receptionists at the hotels where we stayed," he said.

But removed from its unmarked "hamburger box" shipping container inside a KSC high bay on Friday, less than a day after its return, Orion clearly displayed the effects of its unmanned, 20,000-mph re-entry from space and Pacific Ocean splashdown two weeks earlier.

The once-pristine black heat shielding tiles covering the 11-foot-tall capsule appeared mottled with gray-green patches and streaks, scorched from heating up to 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

NASA said the capsule also suffered some dings from micrometeroids during its two orbits, as expected.

Orion rewarded NASA and lead contractor Lockheed Martin by completing 85 of 87 test objectives during the $375 million Exploration Flight Test-1 mission flown Dec. 5, based on preliminary analysis.

The two missed objectives resulted from some airbags not inflating properly after splashdown, but they didn't keep Orion from staying upright during roughly five hours bobbing in the ocean 600 miles southwest of San Diego.

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Once it was recovered and returned to Naval Base San Diego, Orion's flight data recorders were removed and plugs taken from its 16.5-foot diameter heat shield, which is coated with the same material used by Apollo capsules but is several feet wider.

"Everyone was incredibly pleased with the performance of the vehicle," said Jules Schneider, Lockheed Martin's Orion KSC operations manager. "I think you can tell, it came through the trial by fire pretty well."

Government auditors say Orion, on which NASA has spent more than $9 billion over a decade, still faces significant technical challenges to get ready for a first flight with a crew by 2021.

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

After the thrill of seeing Orion launch and fly for the first time and returning home to KSC, where it was assembled, teams must now accept a likely four-year wait until the next test flight.

That's targeted for 2018, again without a crew, and would be the first mission launched from KSC by NASA's 322-foot Space Launch System rocket, which NASA thinks could be ready by November 2018.

"It's like the entire human spaceflight team from around the country was enthused and charged, and so we really don't like the idea of having to wait another three years," said Phil Weber, senior technical manager for KSC's Ground Systems Development Operations program.

But he reasoned that since plans to keep Orion and launch it on a new rocket were only confirmed a few years ago, the program is now about halfway to that next flight, with lots of work left to do.

"We're at hump day right now; that's what we told our team," said Weber. "We want to launch soon, but we've got to have the time to get everything ready."

The Orion slated to fly by 2018 is already in production, with its interior shell expected to arrive at KSC late next year.

That Orion will depend on the European Space Agency for a key propulsion and power module that did not fly on the recent test flight.

NASA won't reveal until next summer how confident it is that Orion will be ready to fly in 2018, or what the total cost will be to reach the first flight with a crew.

For now, however, the Orion team can close out 2014 basking in the glow of a successful first spaceflight, and deserving a rest after the long road trip home that followed.

"A lot of times going down back roads we would say ourselves, 'I wonder if these people know that we have a $350 million spacecraft in here going right by their neighborhood,'" Garcia said of the convoy. "It was very exciting, and we are thrilled to be back."

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 or jdean@floridatoday.com. Follow on Twitter at @flatoday_jdean.