With Orion now safely back on Earth, NASA and Lockheed Martin will be tearing down the capsule and analyzing data from sensors aboard the vehicle to answer some big questions, including how well the capsule's heat shield held up during the re-entry and what the ride would have felt like had astronauts been aboard during the Dec. 5 inaugural flight. Engineers will use the findings to tweak the design of the second Orion now in development for Exploration Mission 1, an unmanned test run to the vicinity of the moon planned for 2018. Astronauts are expected to ride inside Orion for the first time on Exploration Mission 2 in 2022, a shakeout flight to the neighborhood of the moon or possibly an asteroid, if one can be pulled into range. If EM-2 goes off on time, the mission will occur 50 years after the final Apollo mission -Apollo 17.
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