NASA’s Orion space capsule successfully fired its main engine today for a maneuver that sent the four astronauts of the Artemis 2 mission out of Earth orbit and onward to the moon.
The translunar injection burn lasted five minutes and 50 seconds, and committed the spacecraft to a course that will result in a lunar flyby and a gravity-assisted U-turn on April 6. “Looks like a good burn,” capsule communicator Chris Birch said at Mission Control in Houston.
The trajectory is designed so that the capsule, christened Integrity, will return to Earth on April 10 without requiring any further major engine firings. “From this point forward, the laws of orbital mechanics are going to carry our crew to the moon, around the far side and back to Earth,” said Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate.
After the burn, Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen paid tribute to the Artemis team. “We firmly felt the power of your perseverance during every second of that burn,” he told Mission Control. “Humanity has once again shown what we are capable of, and it’s your hopes for the future that carry us now on this journey around the moon.”
One day after their historic launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Hansen and his NASA crewmates — mission commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and mission specialist Christina Koch — were distracted by the views outside.
“We are getting just a beautiful view of the dark side of Earth right now, lit by the moon,” Hansen said. “None of us can get to lunch because we’re glued to the window. We’re taking pictures.”
During a news briefing, NASA mission managers said the spacecraft has generally been performing well. Here are some of the highlights (and lowlights) of the first mission to send astronauts around the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972:
- Orion is equipped with the first sit-down toilet available for missions to the moon, but it took some extra effort to get the toilet working after launch. Judd Frieling, Artemis 2’s ascent flight director, said the toilet’s pump wasn’t initially primed with enough water to work correctly. Adding more water to the system solved the problem. At least the Artemis 2 crew didn’t have to deal with what Apollo 10’s astronauts experienced during an episode that came to be known as a “Close Encounter of the Turd Kind.”
- Pilot Victor Glover successfully tested Orion’s manual control system during a proximity operations demonstration that involved a series of controlled approach and retreat maneuvers, The Space Launch System rocket’s upper stage served as the reference target for the 70-minute exercise. Orion program manager Howard Hu said the maneuvering system “performed better than expected.”
- Four small satellites were deployed into Earth orbit from the Space Launch System’s Orion stage adapter. The CubeSat quartet included Argentina’s ATENEA satellite, which will investigate radiation shielding; Saudi Arabia’s Space Weather CubeSat-1, which will monitor space weather; Germany’s TACHELES satellite, which will test technologies for use on future space vehicles; and South Korea’s K-Rad Cube, which will measure space radiation and its biological effect across the Van Allen radiation belts.
- The crew and ground controllers dealt with the kinds of computer glitches that would be familiar to techies on Earth — including a Microsoft Outlook problem that was solved by reloading program files, and an unresponsive personal computing device.
This video documents stage separation during the April 1 ascent of NASA’s Space Launch System. Go full screen if you can:
More pictures from Artemis 2’s first day:
Check back with Cosmic Log for daily updates about the Artemis 2 mission.
