NASA’s Artemis moon mission ends with a gush of water

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The Artemis I mission — an uncrewed 25-day test flight around the moon intended to pave the way for future astronaut missions — came to a momentous end as NASA’s Orion spacecraft successfully splashed down the ocean on Sunday.

The spacecraft has completed the final leg of its journey, approaching the thick inner layer of Earth’s atmosphere after traveling 239,000 miles (385,000 km) between the Moon and Earth. It splashed at 12:40 p.m. ET Sunday in the Pacific Ocean off Mexico’s Baja California.

This last step was among the most important and dangerous stages of the mission.

But after I splashed out, Rob Navias, the NASA commentator who led Sunday’s broadcast, called the re-entry process “textbook.”

“I’m overwhelmed,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Sunday. “This is an extraordinary day.”

The capsule is now bobbing in the Pacific Ocean, where it will remain until Sunday night as NASA gathers additional data and runs some tests. This process, like the rest of the mission, is meant to make sure the Orion spacecraft is ready to fly for the astronauts.

The capsule is expected to spend less time in the water during a manned mission, perhaps as little as two hours, according to Melissa Jones, recovery director for the mission.

A fleet of rescue vehicles—including boats, a helicopter, and a US Navy ship called the USS Portland—awaits nearby.

“This was a challenging mission,” Mike Sarafin, NASA’s Artemis I mission manager, told reporters Sunday night. “And this is what mission success looks like.”

The spacecraft was traveling at about 32 times the speed of sound (24,850 mph or roughly 40,000 kilometers per hour) when it hit the air — so fast that compression waves caused the spacecraft’s exterior to heat up to about 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees). . Celsius).

“The next big test is a heat shield,” Nelson told CNN in a phone interview Thursday, referring to the barrier designed to protect the Orion capsule from the painful physical factors of re-entering Earth’s atmosphere.

The intense heat also caused air molecules to ionize, causing them to build up Plasma that caused a 5-minute outage of communications, depending To Artemis I Flight Director Judd Frieling.

Interactive: Trace the path Artemis will take around the moon and back

When the capsule reached about 200,000 feet (61,000 meters) above the ground, it performed a roll maneuver that briefly sent the capsule back up—kind of like skipping a boulder across the surface of a lake.

There are several reasons for using the skip maneuver.

Joe Bomba, Lockheed Martin’s president of Thermal Aeronautical Sciences, said: statement. Lockheed is NASA’s prime contractor for the Orion spacecraft.

“By dividing the heat and force of re-entry into two events, skip-entry also provides benefits such as reducing g-forces experienced by astronauts,” according to Lockheed, referring to the crushing forces humans experience during spaceflight.

There was another communications blackout that lasted about three minutes after the skip maneuver.

As it embarked on its final descent, the capsule’s speed slowed dramatically, hurling thousands of miles per hour until its parachutes deployed. By the time it fell, Orion should have been traveling at about 20 mph (32 kph). However, NASA officials didn’t have an exact speed yet at a press conference at 3:30 p.m. EDT.

Howard Hu, NASA’s Orion program manager, noted that the temperature in the Orion crew cabin maintained moderate temperatures between 60 degrees to 71 degrees Fahrenheit based on the data.

While there were no astronauts on this test mission – only a few mannequins equipped to collect data and snoopy doll – emphasized Nelson, head of NASA Importance To prove that the capsule can achieve a safe return.

The space agency’s plans are to turn the Artemis moon missions into a program that will send astronauts to Mars, a journey that will have a much faster and bolder re-entry process.

Orion traveled nearly 1.3 million miles (2 million km) during this mission on a swing trajectory to a distant lunar orbit, carrying the capsule Farther than any spacecraft designed to transport humans ever traveled.

A secondary objective for this mission was the Orion Service Module, a cylindrical attachment at the bottom of the spacecraft, to deploy 10 small satellites. But at least four of those satellites failed after being dumped into orbit, including a small moon lander developed in Japan And one of NASA’s own payload It was supposed to be one of the first small satellites for interplanetary space exploration.

On its flight, the spacecraft is captured Stunning photos From Earth, and during two close flybys, I took pictures of the lunar surface and “floor height. ”

Nelson said that if he had to give the Artemis I mission a letter grade so far, it would be an A.

“Not an A-plus, simply because we expect things to go wrong. The good news is that when something goes wrong, NASA knows how to fix it,” Nelson said. But if you Teacher, I’ll give her an A plus.”

With the success of the Artemis I mission, NASA will now dive into the data gathered on this flight and look to select a crew for the Artemis II mission, which could take off in 2024. A crew announcement is expected in early 2023, NASA officials said Sunday afternoon.

Artemis II aims to send astronauts on a trajectory similar to that of Artemis I, flying around the Moon but not landing on its surface.

Artemis III mission, Currently It is scheduled to be launched in 2025is expected To return the shoes to the Moon, NASA officials said it would involve the first woman and first person of color to achieve such a feat.