Orion, what happens to the capsule after returning to Earth

Reentry brought Orion to within 0.02 degrees of the team’s intended flight angle, while splashdown in the ocean it hit the target almost perfectlystopping approximately 2 nautical miles from the intended destination site. At the end of the splashdown, all five of Orion’s balloon-shaped bags inflated, keeping the capsule upright above the water. NASA and Navy officers who are part of the recovery team then approached Orion in helicopters and boats, preparing to recover the spacecraft and stow it in the belly of the USS Portland for the return trip to land.

The next steps

In the coming months, the Artemis team will also study data gathered from communications systems and the many space-based radiation sensors that had been attached to three mannequins aboard Orion. This information – which will be important for building a habitable capsule for a human crew and for ensuring communication between the spacecraft and engineers on the ground – will help the team prepare for Artemis 2. During this trip, scheduled for 2024, astronauts will fly around the Moon in a second version of the Orion spacecraft and identify potential landing spots for the third mission. NASA and its international and commercial partners are already working on the new capsule, but also on the rocket and boosters of the Space launch system that will launch it and on the European service module that will take care of propulsion, power and cooling. The team may modify the design of some of these systems based on the analysis conducted on Artemis 1.

NASA is already aware that much of the inaugural mission, which lasted 26 days and traveled some 2.2 million kilometers, went smoothly: despite several launch delays caused by hydrogen leaks and since the arrival of a hurricane, the gigantic SLS rocket took off successfully on November 16th. The rocket then deployed 10 small satellites, who have set off on their side missions. Orion passed about 129 kilometers from the lunar surface and completed it on November 28 the furthest trip from Earth ever made by a spacecraft capable of accommodating a crew, about 433 thousand kilometers from the Earth. Also on Dec. 5, Orion’s cameras snapped photos of the Moon and Earth during the capsule’s last lunar flyby, an homage to astronaut Bill Anders’ iconic shot aboard Apollo 8 in 1968, renamed Earthrise.

Difficulty and historical scope

However, some of these “mini missions” have failed. The CubeSat to Study Solar Particles, or CuSp, had what NASA called a “unexplained battery abnormality“, then losing contact with the research team. The Japanese lunar lander Omotenashi also failed to reach the Moon. NASA then also lost contact with the Nea Scout, which is located on an asteroid, and with the LunIr, an infrared lunar cartographer Even if the prospects are not rosy, these missions are not necessarily doomed: in July, NASA had lost contact with the Capstone spacecraft , however managing to restore it at a later time; now the spacecraft is successfully orbiting the Moon. However, these small satellites have a limited battery and in some cases it was not possible to recharge them.

Despite these difficulties, the Artemis program is now well underway, exactly 50 years after the last Apollo mission. After Artemis 2’s manned orbit around the Moon, Artemis 3 will lead the first woman and first black person on the lunar surfacewho will be the first humans to walk on our satellite since Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schnitt’s landing in the Taurus-Littrow Valley in 1972. later missions they will serve to deliver and assemble the modules of the Gateway space station, which will orbit the Moon and could serve as a test-bed station for future expeditions to Mars.

As Orion gently descended into the ocean on Sunday, NASA commentator Rob Navia took a moment to reflect on the significance of this achievement: “From Tranquility Base at Taurus-Littrow to the still waters of the Pacific, the latest chapter of NASA’s journey to the Moon comes to a close. Orion, is back on Earth“he said, describing Orion as the “NASA’s new ticket to the moon and beyond“.

This article originally appeared on Wired US.