Orion Recovered After Safe Splashdown

Lockheed Martin's Orion space capsule is on its way to San Diego after a flawless re-entry and splashdown capped an almost equally successful shakedown mission around the moon. The ship, which will ultimately be used to carry astronauts to the moon and perhaps Mars, hit the surface of the Pacific off Baja Mexico at 12:40 p.m. ET Sunday. It then spent about six hours bobbing in the ocean while NASA scientists gathered yet more data from the finale of the 25.5-day mission. The capsule carried instrumented mannequins to aid in assessing what the future human occupants can expect on their missions.

The spacecraft used a new "skip entry" descent that allowed NASA to more precisely set the re-entry trajectory of the capsule. Instead of just plowing into the atmosphere, the capsule hit the edge of it for initial deceleration and then re-entered for the final plunge. The capsule also had a newly designed heat shield and it held up. The temperature inside the capsule rose from 64 to 71 degrees Fahrenheit while the plasma cloud formed by the friction of re-entry hit 5,000 degrees. After its prolonged dunk in the ocean, the capsule was hauled aboard the USS Portland for the trip to San Diego.