NASA’s Orion capsule has returned from a trip to the moon, completing the first-ever journey by an American spacecraft to that celestial body. The Orion capsule, which is designed to carry astronauts to and from space, departed Earth on a five-month journey in late October and arrived at the moon on Sunday. “This is an incredible achievement,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “The team’s hard work and dedication paid off.” Orion is equipped with a number of advanced technologies that will be used by future missions to explore the moon and other destinations in space. These technologies include a heat shield that can protect the spacecraft from intense heat during its journey through space, as well as an airbag system that can cushion the impact of a landing on the moon or another planet. The Orion capsule also carries several scientific instruments that will be used to study lunar rocks and soil samples, as well as collect data about the environment around the moon. The mission is also expected to help researchers learn more about how humans could someday travel to Mars. ..
The Orion spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean at 9:40 AM on December 11, after sitting on top of the SLS rocket for launch and traveling around the Moon. The splashdown marks a successful end to the Artemis 1 mission, which was the first complete test for both the Orion capsule and the Space Launch System rocket. It was automated with no people on board, but it’s likely that the follow-up Artemis 2 mission will have a crew.
NASA said in a blog post, “during the mission, Orion performed two lunar flybys, coming within 80 miles of the lunar surface. At its farthest distance during the mission, Orion traveled nearly 270,000 miles from our home planet, more than 1,000 times farther than where the International Space Station orbits Earth, to intentionally stress systems before flying crew. […] During re-entry, Orion endured temperatures about half as hot as the surface of the Sun at about 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Within about 20 minutes, Orion slowed from nearly 25,000 mph to about 20 mph for its parachute-assisted splashdown.”
The space agency is now working on bringing the Orion capsule back to the Kennedy Space Center, after recovery teams on the USS Portland fished it out of the ocean. There are several science payloads within the capsule to check, and NASA will evaluate the capsule and heat shield to see how it held up after re-entry.
Source: NASA (1, 2)
