As Orion continues to travel to get into lunar orbit, NASA has had a problem. Contact with the Artemis I capsule was lost for almost 50 minutes. NASA does not know why.
Communication between Orion and Earth was cut off for a few moments. It was around 7 a.m. (metropolitan France time) on November 23, 2022, when the NASA teams responsible for controlling the flight of the spacecraft lost contact with it. It was not planned at all.
The capsule ensures the first mission of the Artemis programan ambitious project that aims to one day bring humans back to the Lune. This loss of connection was therefore worrying, because everything must go perfectly with this unmanned flight, if NASA then wants to attempt crewed flights. Fortunately, contact with Orion was only interrupted during 47 minutes. « The team has fixed the issue and Orion remains in a stable configuration », let it be known The NASA. The continuation of the capsule’s mission is not called into question.
It was at the NASA mission control center, at the Lyndon B. Johnson space center (in Houston), that the problem was discovered: no more data could be received or sent to Orion. It happened as NASA reconfigured the link between the capsule and the Deep Space Network, the network of earth stations through which the agency communicates with its space probes. ” The team solved the problem with a reconfiguration on the land side “, mentions the agency. However, the origin of this loss of signal remains unclear. An analysis is underway to understand the source.
The Orion capsule continues on its way to lunar orbit
The concern arose when Orion was in the seventh day of the Artemis I mission. The vessel is currently out of the lunar sphere of influence (the gravitational attraction exerted by the Moon on other bodies). This trip should allow Orion to enter a very distant orbit of the Moon and retrograde, that is to say in the opposite direction with respect to the rotation of the Moon around the Earth.
The capsule should reach its furthest distance from the Moon on November 25, shortly before performing a new maneuver to position itself in its orbit. You can see in real time this route of the Artemis I mission thanks to a NASA site.