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The team involved in the Orion spaceship launch celebrated its successful debut test flight around Earth.
At a post-flight briefing from the Kennedy Space Center, NASA's associate administrator for Human Exploration and Operations thanked the media and the public for "catching that spirit that we all feel as human beings that we as a species are meant to push human presence into the solar system."
The Orion spaceship designed to one day fly astronauts to Mars made a near-bullseye splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on Friday, wrapping up a flawless, unmanned debut test flight.
The point of the test flight, which cost NASA about $375 million, was to verify that Orion's 16.5-foot 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,
