Miami, Dec 1 – The Orion capsule of NASA’s unmanned mission Artemis I began on Thursday the first of two maneuvers to leave its “distant retrograde lunar orbit” by igniting the vehicle’s engines, and start thus his return trip to Earth.
The engine ignition operation took place at 4:54 p.m. US Eastern Time (21:54 GMT) and could be seen in real time thanks to the images transmitted by Orion to the Johnson Space Center in Houston (Texas), where the mission is headed. of the Artemis program.
At that time, according to the images, the start of the first maneuver to start the engine took place, an operation that lasted a couple of minutes while the spacecraft was 237,813 miles (382,721 kilometers) away from Earth and 52,950 miles (85,214 kilometers) from the Moon.
“It’s time to leave the distant retrograde orbit (in orbit opposite the satellite’s path around Earth) and come home.” The return trip from Orion to Earth will culminate with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean scheduled for December 11, according to what was stated from the space center.
Before the capsule’s engines were turned on, Robin Elgart, an expert radiation scientist, explained that one of the objectives of this mission is to investigate how to “mitigate the impact on humans of space radiation” from solar particles and magnetic fields. of the universe.
A video showed the inside of a capsule and the way in which experts assemble a “radiation protection shield” based on a kind of cushions or pillows that are stacked until they completely cover the astronauts.
“We are working on designing new strategies to protect astronauts from space radiation,” Elgart said.
In a teleconference this Wednesday at the Johnson Space Center, Mike Serafin, mission manager, announced for this Friday the start of the maneuvers for the vehicle to leave its retrograde lunar orbit and stressed the importance of “collection of data and tests of flight and incredible images” taken from the Orion, which was traveling this Thursday afternoon at a speed, in real time, of about 2,300 mph (3,700 kilometers per hour).
Last Monday Orion reached the maximum distance achieved by any spacecraft from Earth: 434,522 kilometers (270,000 miles), thus surpassing the record distance of Apollo XIII.
The capsule, which was traveling at 5,102 mph (8,200 km/hour), thus broke the record for the farthest distance traveled from Earth by any spacecraft designed to be crewed by humans, according to NASA.
The general objective of the Artemis program is to establish a base on the Moon as a previous step to reach Mars in the future.
To do this, after Artemis I, NASA will launch Artemis II into lunar orbit in 2024, with a crew, and the takeoff of Artemis III is expected for 2025, a mission in which astronauts, including a woman, would touch the ground of the satelite.
NASA had to delay the departure of the mission four times, twice for technical reasons and another two for meteorological reasons.
Finally, on November 16, the SLS, the most powerful and largest of all NASA rockets, with a height greater than a 30-story building (322 feet or 98 meters), lifted off from Florida propelling the Orion.