NASA’s Orion spacecraft en route to the Moon, with Earth in the background, in an image released by the space agency on November 16, 2022Handout
On the third day of its space mission, the performance of the Orion spacecraft, en route to the Moon following taking off from Florida, “exceeds expectations”, welcomed NASA on Friday.
This new capsule should take astronauts to the Moon in the coming years – the first to set foot on its surface since the last Apollo mission in 1972. This first test flight, without a crew on board, should first be used to ensure that the vehicle is safe.
“Today, we met to review the performance of the Orion spacecraft (…), and it exceeds expectations”, declared during a press conference Mike Sarafin, in charge of this mission named Artemis. 1.
The spacecraft’s four solar panels, regarding 4 meters long, deployed correctly and “provide more energy” than expected, said Jim Geffre, responsible for Orion at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. It is there, in Texas, that the control center from which the ship is piloted is located.
Orion is already some 320,000 km from Earth, and is preparing to perform with its engines the first of the four main thrusts programmed during the mission.
This maneuver, which will take place early Monday morning, will bring the spacecraft closer to only regarding 100 km from the lunar surface, in order to take advantage of its gravitational force. As this will take place behind the far side of the Moon, NASA is expected to lose contact with the spacecraft for approximately 35 minutes.
“We are going to pass over some of the Apollo landing sites,” said Jeff Radigan, NASA flight director, even if these will be in the shadows. A video of the flyover will be released later.
Four days later, a second thrust from the engines will place Orion in a distant orbit around the Moon. The ship will go up to 64,000 km behind her – a record for a habitable capsule.
It will then begin the journey back to Earth, with a landing in the Pacific Ocean scheduled for December 11, following just over 25 days of flight.
The success of this mission depends on the future of Artemis 2, which will take astronauts around the Moon without landing, then Artemis 3, which will finally mark the return of humans to the lunar surface. These missions are officially scheduled to take place in 2024 and 2025, respectively.
Mike Sarafin also clarified on Friday that 10 scientific micro-satellites had indeed been deployed when the rocket took off, but that half of them were experiencing technical or communication problems. These experiments, carried out separately by independent teams, have no impact on the main mission.
