While on the DRO trajectory, flight controllers put Orion and its service module through their paces, testing the vehicle's navigation, propulsion, thermal control and computer systems in the deep space environment to verify they work as expected.Īnother OMS engine firing last Thursday took Orion out of its lunar orbit, sending the craft back toward the moon for Monday's powered flyby. The spacecraft carried out an initial lunar flyby on November 21, followed by another OMS engine firing four days later to put the craft into a "distant retrograde orbit" that carried Orion farther from Earth - 268,563 miles - than any previous human-rated spaceship. While the mission's top objective - testing the heat shield at lunar re-entry temperatures - has not yet been accomplished, there have been no other major problems that would prevent or significantly delay subsequent flights. The Orion capsule and its European Space Agency-supplied service module have also performed well. A look back at the moon after Orion's powered flyby rocket firing. Despite repeated hydrogen leaks and other glitches that triggered multiple delays, the giant rocket chalked up a near-flawless climb to space. The Artemis 1 mission was designed as an unpiloted maiden test flight of both the Orion capsule and the Space Launch System rocket that boosted the spacecraft onto a trajectory to the moon. The program is targeting future landings near the moon's south pole where ice deposits may be found in permanently shadowed craters, potentially providing a source of air, water and rocket fuel for future exploration. The Artemis 1 mission is the first in a series of NASA flights aimed at sending astronauts back to the moon for long-term exploration and technology development intended to pave the way toward eventual piloted flights to Mars. Plunging back into the discernible atmosphere at some 25,000 mph, the Orion's heat shield will have to withstand temperatures as high as 5,000 degrees as it dives in, skips back out slightly and then re-enters for good, slowing to just 117 mph by the time its main parachutes deploy two-and-a-half minutes before splashdown. Moments after moving back into contact with flight controllers after a pass behind the moon, the Orion spacecraft beamed back live television shots of moon and Earth as the spacecraft headed for home (lens flare edited out for clarity). The burn set up a precisely-targeted re-entry and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean west of San Diego at 12:40 p.m. EST, took place on the far side of the moon while the spacecraft was out of contact with flight controllers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.īut the orbital maneuvering system engine worked flawlessly, firing on time with 6,000 pounds of thrust to change the capsule's velocity by 655 mph. The 3-minute 27-second burn, starting at 11:43:23 a.m. Passing within a scant 81 miles of the moon, NASA's unpiloted Orion capsule fired its main engine Monday in a gravity-assist lunar flyby that put the ship on course for a return to Earth Sunday to close out the Artemis 1 test flight.
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