HUNTSVILLE, Ala. - The Dec. 5 test flight of NASA's Orion spacecraft was "almost flawless," program manager Mark Geyer said in Huntsville Tuesday, but challenges and surprises before and after the flight have given NASA plenty to work on as the Space Launch System moves forward.

"It flew pretty much right down the expected paths for loads and guidance and navigation," Geyer after briefing the Huntsville chapter of the National Space Club on the flight. "While we expected some of the computers to see some issues during the radiation events as we were going through the Van Allen belts, we really didn't see any of that."

The one major system that didn't work as planned is designed to keep the spacecraft upright in the water after splashdown. It consisted of five inflatable bags, and only two inflated fully, Geyer said. Two bags inflated partially and one didn't inflate at all. "We're looking at it now...," Geyer said. The recovery "took a little longer than would be OK for the crew," he said.

Detailed examination of data from Orion's 1,200 sensors has been delayed by another surprise, Geyer said. Orion returned with more hazardous fuel remaining on-board than expected, and it has to be safely removed.

Orion's heat shield will be removed and trucked to Huntsville's Marshall Space Flight Center in about two months, Geyer said. The center has the technical skills to prepare the shield for an upcoming ground test.

Pre-flight lessons

"A lot of the lessons came before we actually made this flight," Geyer said. The most important lesson, he said, was remembering "how difficult the first build (of any new spacecraft) was." He called the process "a day to day grind ... a thousand things and you try to decide on the 20 you need to focus on today."

Geyer and Mike Hawes, manager of Orion construction for prime contractor Lockheed Martin, are veterans of past NASA programs. But Hawes, who also spoke Tuesday, said, "As much as you think it's the same, it's different."

For example, Geyer said that when NASA got the green light to build Orion, it "found a drop-off in the number of suppliers certified to do the work that we needed. To build that heat shield structure - it's actually titanium pieces that make a skeleton - we had to go out to 23 different guys to do it because there weren't enough major companies to do that work....

"The bad news is it took us a lot to get that supplier base back up," he said. "The good news is now all those guys are certified, they've made parts like this, and they can do that for other jobs. It's good for the country ... but it does take time to spin up."

Keeping interest high during the three-year wait for the next launch starts with remembering what's different, Geyer said. "Development is different because we're designing things for the first time," he said. "We're adding new systems between these flights. The big things we're adding between what we did in December and 2018 is the rocket, which is a huge amount of work, and for us, the service module and finishing the rest of the crew module. That's a lot of work that needs to get done.

"The schedule is driven by the budget," Geyer said. "I feel we're blessed to get the budget we have given the things going on. We have a bipartisan agreement on this budget level, and we need to execute to that. But that's what drives the schedule."