After a 60,000-mile journey in space, NASA's Orion capsule is back at the Kennedy Space Center.

Now that it's home, NASA will begin inspecting its next-generation spaceship as it gets ready for the capsule's next test, in late 2017 or early 2018.

Orion returned to the Space Coast on Thursday after a 2,700-mile road trip from San Diego, where the U.S. Navy recovered the spacecraft from the Pacific Ocean.

The capsule spent weeks on the road in a special container, but members of the media will get to see Orion up-close on Friday.

Orion launched on Dec. 5 on top of a Delta IV rocket. The first test flight sent the unmanned spacecraft 3,600 miles above the Earth before it splashed down 4.5 hours later in the Pacific Ocean.

The journey was to test key systems that will be needed for when humans eventually board Orion for a mission to Mars or an asteroid.

NASA gathered data in real time during the mission, and more was removed when Orion reached San Diego, including heat shield samples.

At the Kennedy Space Center, engineers will remove the back shell of the spacecraft and inspect its cabling, fluid lines, propulsion system and avionics boxes.

NASA managers said initial inspections have shown nothing unexpected. The mission team said the test flight achieved 85 of 87 flight objectives.

The team is studying issues with two of the inflatable balloons that stabilized the capsule upon splashdown. The balloons didn't inflate all the way, managers said.

The Orion mission team has much more work as they look over the data collected during the test, but they said NASA's next-generation spacecraft performed well.

"Everybody was incredibly pleased with the performance of the vehicle, and I think you can tell it came through the 'trial by fire' pretty well," said Jules Schneider, the Lockheed Martin Orion manager.

Much of the ride back to Florida from San Diego was on back roads.

"Going down back roads, we would often say to ourselves, 'I wonder if people know they have a $350 million spacecraft going right by their neighborhood,'" said Louie Garcia, NASA's ground operations manager.

Orion will be refurbished for use in late 2017 or early 2018, when NASA will test the spacecraft's launch abort system. That's important in case astronauts need a quick escape from the spacecraft in an emergency.

Orion's the first piloted mission is currently scheduled for 2021.