Artemis I: Orion enters retrograde orbit around the Moon | Photo

More than a week has now passed since the departure of the Artemis I mission and it is time to take stock of what has happened in the last few hours. The Orion spacecraft is now on its seventh day of travel and as mentioned several times, the main objective of the mission is to perform a test flight around the Moon, without landing, but thus paving the way for the future presence of astronauts on board . But first there must be the certainty that primary systems and backup solutions work perfectly, because when the life of human beings is at stake, the margin of error must be reduced to a minimum.

For the moment there have been no hitches and everything is proceeding according to plan, so before seeing the latest images let’s find out what the most interesting developments have been.

To begin with, NASA reports that during the past day, when it was 07:02 in the morning here, Orion has completed its fifth trajectory correction, igniting the European Service Module’s booster engines for 5.9 seconds, the impact of which resulted in Orion’s speed increasing by just under 1 meter per second. The R-4D-11 auxiliary engines are nothing more than a variant of the original R-4D, those used in the lunar missions of the Apollo program.

Arranged in this case in the lower part of the service module, they are divided into four groups of two and each of them is capable of providing about 45 kg of thrust, useful for maneuvers which require great precision in the dosage of power. In total, Orion’s service module has 33 engines of various sizes, which provide the propulsion capacity necessary for the spacecraft to perform one or two orbits around the Moon (only once in this test mission) and return to Earth.

Meanwhile NASA’s Flight Control Room team continued testing the spacecraft’s star trackers to determine their sensitivity to thermal variations as part of planned tests, and engineers used the optical navigation system to collect additional images of the Moon. Operations had already begun on the fifth day of the mission and for the uninitiated, star trackers are a navigational tool that measures the positions of the stars to help the spacecraft determine its orientation. During the previous flight days, engineers evaluated initial data to understand star tracker readings related to thruster firings.

Meanwhile, on the sixth day of the mission, NASA released a video showing the Earth’s rise seen from the Orion spacecraft’s point of view. A short but decidedly fascinating clip, which we propose to follow.

The Star Tracker and the optical navigation system are part of Orion’s advanced guidance, navigation and control system, and it is thanks to them that NASA can know exactly where the spacecraft is in space, the orientation and direction taken. In particular, optical navigation has the important function of a backup solution, i.e. capable of guaranteeing a safe journey home in the event that communications are lost. And given that the mission serves precisely to test every safety technology mounted on board, in the last few hours the flight controllers have put the SAT mode to the test, which is based on an algorithm designed to restore and maintain communications with the Earth in the event that Orion experiences a temporary power outage, resulting in a reboot of the Orion hardware.

This morning, when it was 05:31 with us, Orion left the lunar sphere of influence and will continue to travel towards the next objective, namely the retrograde orbit insertion of November 25th. Just before entering orbit, Orion will be approximately 92,000 km beyond the Moon at its furthest point from the lunar surface during the mission, while on Saturday, November 26, Orion will surpass the record set by Apollo 13 for the furthest distance traveled by a vehicle space designed by man. It was previously set at 400,171 km, but Orion is expected to reach the incredible distance of 432,199 km.

In the meantime, new images have arrived from the cams mounted on the solar panels, such as the one in the header that we offer without cuts. The photo was taken one day after the lunar flyby.

And then there’s the splendid photo taken by Argomoon, a cubesat-type satellite built by the Italian company Argotec. In the following photo we can see the hidden side of the Moon and specifically the area known as the Eastern Sea.

We can see how the least protected part of our satellite has been literally riddled by meteor impacts, this is because it is the most exposed to space.

At this point we just have to wait for further developments on the mission, which of course we will not fail to report to you in the coming days as soon as NASA makes them available.

In the meantime, we remind you that the Perseverance Martian mission is also proceeding at full speed and that the rover has just recently identified a very interesting area for a possible collection of new samples. But there are also news for the Mars Sample Return mission and for Ingenuity! More details in our special published a few days ago.

26/11

As scheduled, NASA’s Orion spacecraft is now in retrograde orbit around the moon for the past day. NASA flight controllers in Houston performed a successful orbital maneuver engine burn for 1 minute and 28 seconds last night at 10:52 PM here. Just before kicking off the maneuver Orion was traveling more than 91,000 km above the lunar surface, marking the furthest distance from the Moon recorded during the mission.

Due to its wide orbit, it will take Orion nearly a week to complete half an orbit around the Moon, then it will emerge to begin its journey home. Speaking of Artemis I, have you already seen the photos at 130 km of the lunar surface? Otherwise, we re-propose our article with all the images uploaded by NASA.

Approximately four days later, the spacecraft will once again harness the gravitational pull of the Moon, combined with a precisely timed lunar flyby to launch Orion on a return course to Earth before splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on Sunday, December 11. And we close with a curiosity, in fact, as we anticipated in the original news today the Orion spacecraft will break the record for the longest distance traveled by a spacecraft designed to transport humans into space and bring them back safely to Earth. It was previously set at 400,171 km (Apollo 13), but Orion is expected to reach the incredible distance of 432,199 km.

While waiting for more info, we leave you with the most recent photos taken during the last day, straddling the orbital insertion. One shows the Moon, the other our home planet. In both cases we are about 400,000 km away from the Earth!