Lockheed Martin Orion team members remove the spacecraft's back shell panels and to perform post-flight assessments at Kennedy Space Center, following EFT-1. Lockheed Martin will provide a complete data analysis report to NASA by March 5. (Lockheed Martin Space Systems)

The high-profile NASA Orion Experimental Flight Test-1 in December went optimally, and a "huge amount" was learned from the data gathered from the flight, Lockheed Martin's Orion Program Manager Mike Hawes said Wednesday.

Lockheed Martin is NASA's prime contractor on the Orion mission.

Many of the specifics of Orion's EFT-1 performance won't be available until NASA receives an official report on March 5, Hawes said. However, he did offer several highlights: the heat shield worked optimally, the mission used less fuel than expected, and flight cameras built by Broomfield-based Ball Aerospace did precisely what they were designed to do.

Hawes also said Wednesday that a whopping 600 gigabytes of data were collected during the 4 hour, 24 minute test flight.

"When we talk about data and the importance of a flight test, so many of our tools are analytical tools that have been rooted in models," Hawes said. "Now, those models get rooted in data."

The success of EFT-1 brings NASA one step closer to the goal of crewed deep-space flight: The agency will next launch an uncrewed Orion mission in 2018, and a crewed mission in 2021.

However, there is work to be done before humans are placed on the next generation spacecraft and all the data now in NASA's hands will be used to guide the development of future Orion iterations.

"That continued analysis will bring the understanding and the modifications that might be applicable to the next mission," Hawes said.

Among initial findings released Wednesday:

Here is the original post:

NASA's Orion initial data yields few surprises, guides next mission