Everything is ready for Orion to leave its retrograde lunar orbit on Thursday

Miami, Nov. 30 (EFE). – The Orion capsule of NASA’s uncrewed Artemis I mission will leave its “distant lunar orbit” this Thursday to begin its journey back to Earth, which will culminate with a landing in the Pacific Ocean scheduled for December 11.

On Wednesday, he said that Orion, which is moving in a retrograde lunar orbit, that is, in an orbit opposite the path of the satellite around the Earth, “will leave its orbit” to start tomorrow the process of returning to Earth. Mike Seraphine, Artemis mission manager, on a conference call at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

Today’s senior mission managers decided in a meeting that, 15 days after Orion’s flight, the capsule will leave retrograde lunar orbit on Thursday, as planned, and begin the process of returning to our home planet.

Serafine added that the capsule is in its eleventh stage of the 17 scheduled to complete its mission, stressing the importance of “data collection, flight tests and stunning images” taken from Orion.

Orion’s scheduled departure from its “extreme lunar orbit” will begin Thursday, Dec. 1 at 16:53 p.m. EDT (2153 GMT), Seraphin said at the press conference featuring Zebulon Scoville, NASA flight director, and Chris. Edelen, Orion Integration Manager.

The expert thanked the European Space Agency (ESA)’s essential contribution to the Artemis I mission, a collaboration that works to “continue learning how the system works.”

“This is an amazing mission,” said Scoville, who stressed that the Artemis I mission has developed very satisfactorily. “We see amazing opportunities to take people to the moon and explore the solar system.”

The mission “pushed to its limits” would “assess the risks of Artemis II, which NASA plans to launch with a crew in 2024,” Scoville said.

Last Monday, Orion reached the furthest distance from Earth any spacecraft has ever achieved: 434,522 kilometers (270,000 miles), surpassing the record distance of Apollo XIII.

According to NASA, the capsule, which is traveling at 5,102 mph (8,200 km/h), broke the record for the furthest distance traveled from Earth by any spacecraft designed to crew humans.

The overall goal of the Artemis program is to establish a base on the Moon as a precursor to reaching Mars in the future.

To do this, after Artemis I, NASA will launch Artemis II to lunar orbit in 2024, with a crew, and Artemis III is expected to take off in 2025, a mission in which astronauts, including a woman, will touch the Earth of the satellite.

NASA had to delay the mission’s departure four times, twice for technical reasons and two more for meteorological reasons.

Finally, on November 16, the SLS, NASA’s most powerful and largest rocket, taller than a 30-story building (322 feet or 98 meters), blasted off from Florida to propel Orion. EFE

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