NASA’s Artemis 1 mission fired its engines near the moon today (November 21), successfully completing the maneuver for contact with Earth.
Artemis 1The unmanned Orion capsule has been sailing towards the moon since Wednesday morning (November 16), when It was launched atop NASA’s giant Space Launch System (SLS) missile.
NASA’s Sandra Jones said during a live broadcast Monday (November 21) at 8:28 a.m. EDT, about an hour after the burn occurred.
NASA was in the dark, literally, during Monday’s burn as Orion He finished burning himself on the other side of the the moon From our planet, as radio signals cannot penetrate from Earth. On its closest approach, the spacecraft came 80 miles (130 kilometers) or so above the lunar surface at 7:44 a.m. EDT (1244 GMT).
The capsule took advantage of the close proximity to its main engine in an “automated flight afterburner,” which would put it on course to enter lunar orbit four days later.
Related: Stunning views of NASA’s Artemis 1 moon rocket debut (photos)
Live updates: NASA’s Artemis 1 lunar mission
Artemis 1 is NASA’s first mission Artemis program for lunar exploration, which aims to establish a manned research base on the moon by the end of 2020, among other goals. The takeoff of Artemis 1 also marked the debut of the SLS, The most powerful rocket ever successfully launched.
Monday’s successful burn will mark another important maneuver on November 25: the launch of an engine designed to put Orion into a distant retrograde orbit (DRO) around the Moon. The capsule will remain on DRO — a stable trajectory that takes it as far as 40,000 miles (64,000 km) from the lunar surface — until December 1, when another engine burns out that will send the capsule back toward Earth.
“This orbit is different from the orbit that was done during the Apollo program, where the spacecraft and its crew were orbiting close to the surface of the moon in a more circular way,” Jones said during the broadcast. “The far retro orbit is important because it helps us learn about how spacecraft operate in a deep space environment.”
Orion will come home on December 11, and hit Earth’s atmosphere at breakneck speeds before eventually plunging softly into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California.
If all goes well with Artemis 1, NASA will be free to start preparing Artemis 2which will send astronauts around the moon in 2024 or thereabouts.
In 2025, the agency plans to launch Artemis 3, which would place the boots near the lunar south pole, the location of the envisioned research base. Artemis 3 will be the first manned lunar landing since the final Apollo mission in 1972, and the first time ever to put a woman and a person of color on the moon.
Mike Wall is the author of “Abroad (Opens in a new tab)Book (Major Grand Publishers, 2018; illustration by Carl Tate), a book about the search for aliens. Follow him on Twitter @tweet (Opens in a new tab). Follow us on Twitter @tweet (Opens in a new tab) or Facebook (Opens in a new tab).
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