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After years of waiting (and several delays) finally the Artemis I mission it is about to end. There Orion capsule it will return to planet Earth in the coming days after reaching distances that had not been touched by spacecraft validated for human flight for decades. A historic moment because it precedes the launch of a manned mission (not before 2024) which will reach lunar orbit, without touching the surface of the Moona task that will be assigned to the third mission of this new program, also thanks to the contribution of SpaceX (which will build the lander).
In recent days, the spacecraft has achieved the second flyby of the natural satellite to exploit its gravitational attraction and thus be directed towards the Earth. The ditching will take place off the coast of California in the San Diego area. This will make it possible to collect data also for this part of the mission, one of the most delicate and which involves a sequence of short-term operations which must be carried out with extremely high precision because when there are people on board there will be no margin for error.
Artemis I’s Orion spacecraft heading for reentry
The ditching of the Orion spacecraft of the Artemis I mission scheduled forDecember 11th at 6.40pm (Italian time). Some ignitions of the engines are still foreseen to allow the last orbital corrections to be made and to allow the correct insertion into the earth’s atmosphere to be able to touch the ocean surface safely.
Mike Sarafin (mission leader of Artemis I) he has declared in the past few hours “Right now, we’re on track to have a fully successful mission with a few bonus objectives we’ve accomplished along the way. Entry Day [ndr. nell’atmosfera terrestre]we will accomplish our first priority goal, which is to demonstrate the vehicle under lunar reentry conditions, as well as our third priority goal, which is to recover the spacecraft.”.
In the past few hours, the engineers have observed (through the cameras placed on the four solar panels) both the European service module and the 1,300 panels for the end protection of the Orion capsule so as to make sure that everything was in order and ready for the return.
As specified byESA (European Space Agency), 40 minutes before ditching the spacecraft, the European service module (ESM) will detach and re-enter the atmosphere disintegrating completely. Orion instead it will orient itself thanks to its engines and, after the initial re-entry phase (where the speed will drop to 520 km/h), it will release the parachutes which will allow the descent to be slowed down with the latter, which will last about 10 minutes. First three small parachutes will be released to separate the cover, then two drogue parachutes will open, ending with the main parachutes (eleven in total). At that point the ship USS Portland (San Antonio class) will carry the capsule inside the hold with a cable hooked by divers.
Always in the last few hours they arrived high resolution images of the second flyby of the moon showing new details, even if the best photographs are obtained by specialized probes (such as LRO). However, it is a moment with particular significance considering that in about three years humans will set foot again after the Apollo missions. About an hour ago Orion capsule it was 291,889 km from the Earth with a speed of 3072 km/h.
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