EST (1737 GMT), slowing the capsule's descent. Orion's three main parachutes deployed at at 12:37 p.m. This "skip maneuver," which no human-rated spacecraft had ever performed before, allows the capsule to cover greater distances and land more precisely during reentry, NASA officials have said. Shortly after entering Earth's atmosphere, Orion left again, bouncing off the upper layers of air like a rock skipping off the surface of a pond. That long journey, and the 25.5-day-long Artemis 1 mission, finally came to an end on Sunday.Ī view of Earth from NASA's Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft as it approached splashdown time on Dec. 1, then headed for home with a 3.5-minute-long engine burn during a close flyby of the moon on Dec. Two days later, Orion reached its maximum distance from its home planet, extending the record to 268,563 miles (432,210 km). 26, the spacecraft got farther from Earth than any other spacecraft designed to carry humans, breaking the old record of 248,655 miles (400,171 km) set in 1970 by the Apollo 13 command module. 25, the capsule arrived in distant retrograde orbit (DRO) around the moon, a highly elliptical path that took Orion 40,000 miles (64,000 km) from the lunar surface at its most distant point. Overall, however, the capsule performed well during its debut journey beyond Earth orbit, checking off milestone after milestone as planned. Shortly after liftoff, for example, the capsule's navigating star trackers returned anomalous readings, a problem that the team soon traced to "dazzling" by Orion's thrusters. Orion experienced a few hiccups during flight. In photos: Artemis 1 launch: Amazing views of NASA's moon rocket debut "The first launch of the Space Launch System rocket was simply eye-watering," Artemis 1 mission manager Mike Sarafin said in a statement on Nov. The huge rocket generated 8.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, making it the most powerful launcher ever to fly successfully. ![]() The SLS sent Orion aloft exactly as planned. That launch - the first ever for the SLS and the second for Orion, which flew to Earth orbit briefly in December 2014 - occurred on Nov. SLS and Orion weathered Nicole on the launch pad, and did so in good shape inspections soon revealed that both vehicles were ready for liftoff. 10 - Nicole, which hit Florida as a Category 1 hurricane but quickly weakened to a tropical storm. ![]() However, another big storm slammed into the Space Coast on Nov. 4, seemingly after the end of hurricane season. Team members rolled the rocket and capsule back out to the pad on Nov. The Artemis 1 stack stayed inside KSC's huge Vehicle Assembly Building for more than a month, getting some upgrade and repair work done during that stretch. ![]() In late September, the Artemis 1 team rolled the SLS and Orion off Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida to shelter from Hurricane Ian. NASA originally tried to launch Artemis 1 in late August, but several technical glitches, including a leak of liquid hydrogen propellant, pushed things back a month.Īnd then Mother Nature intervened.
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