NASA's Orion spacecraft successfully enters lunar orbit


Washington, Nov 26 (IANS): The US space agency on Saturday successfully performed a burn to insert Orion spacecraft under the Artemis I Moon mission into lunar orbit and Orion will fly about 40,000 miles (64,400 kms) above the moon.

Flight Controllers at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston inserted Orion into a distant retrograde orbit by firing the orbital maneuvering system engine for 1 minute and 28 seconds.

Shortly before conducting the burn, Orion was travelling more than 5,700A miles above the lunar surface, marking the farthest distance it will reach from the Moon during the mission.

While in lunar orbit, flight controllers will monitor key systems and perform checkouts while in the environment of deep space.

"Due to the distance of the orbit, it will take Orion nearly a week to complete half an orbit around the Moon, where it will exit the orbit for the return journey home," the US space agency said in a statement.

About four days later, the spacecraft will harness the Moon's gravitational force once again, combined with a precisely timed lunar flyby burn to slingshot Orion onto its return course to Earth ahead of a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on December 11.

"On Saturday, Orion spacecraft will break the record for farthest distance travelled by a spacecraft designed to carry humans to space and safely return them to Earth," said NASA.

This distance is currently held by the Apollo 13 spacecraft at 248,655 miles (400,171 km) from Earth.

Orion was specifically designed for missions to carry humans farther into space than ever before.

On Artemis I, engineers are testing several aspects of the Orion spacecraft needed for deep space missions with crew.

The Artemis II mission will test the systems required for astronauts to live and breathe in deep space.

 

  

Top Stories


Leave a Comment

Title: NASA's Orion spacecraft successfully enters lunar orbit



You have 2000 characters left.

Disclaimer:

Please write your correct name and email address. Kindly do not post any personal, abusive, defamatory, infringing, obscene, indecent, discriminatory or unlawful or similar comments. Daijiworld.com will not be responsible for any defamatory message posted under this article.

Please note that sending false messages to insult, defame, intimidate, mislead or deceive people or to intentionally cause public disorder is punishable under law. It is obligatory on Daijiworld to provide the IP address and other details of senders of such comments, to the authority concerned upon request.

Hence, sending offensive comments using daijiworld will be purely at your own risk, and in no way will Daijiworld.com be held responsible.