After its successful launch and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean Friday, NASA's Orion spacecraft is on its way back to Florida.
On Monday it was off-loaded from the USS Anchorage at Naval Base San Diego.
The U.S Navy ship recovered the capsule after the splashdown about 600 miles southwest of San Diego.
Once it gets to the Kennedy Space Center it will be processed and the crew module will be refurbished for use in Ascent Abort-2 in 2018, a test of Orion’s launch abort system.
Orion blasted off from Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 7:05 a.m. Friday morning on a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket.
The unmanned test flight ended about 4.5 hours after it began and achieved at least one record: flying farther and faster than any capsule built for humans since the Apollo moon program.
Lockheed Martin Corp. built the capsule and is staging the $370 million test flight for NASA.
Orion is NASA's first new spacecraft for humans in more than a generation, succeeding the now-retired space shuttles. Unlike the capsules under development by two U.S. companies for space station crew transport, Orion is meant for the long haul, both in time and space; it would be supplemented with habitats for potential Mars trips.
Future Orion launches will use the mega rocket still under development by NASA, known as SLS or Space Launch System. The first Orion-SLS launch is targeted for 2018, unmanned, followed by the first piloted mission in 2021.