NASA’s Artemis 1 lunar rover returned to Earth on Sunday, slamming into the upper atmosphere at more than 24,000 mph and enduring a 5,000-degree re-entry inferno before settling down picture-perfect in the Pacific Ocean to close a 1.4 million 25 days. -Miles test flight to the moon and back.
Descending under three huge parachutes, the 9-ton Orion capsule without a ball gently hit the water 200 miles west of Baja California at 12:40 pm EST, 20 minutes after encountering the first traces of the atmosphere perceptible 76 miles up.
“I’m overwhelmed. This is an extraordinary day,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “It’s historic, because now we’re going back into deep space with a new generation.”
NASA’s unmanned Orion capsule descends into the Pacific Ocean west of Baja California on Sunday to conclude a 25-day test flight around the moon and back. The mission is expected to help pave the way for the first manned mission to the Artemis moon in 2024. Network TV Pool (above and below)
In a fitting, if unplanned, coincidence, the crash occurred 50 years after the final moon landing of Apollo 17 in 1972 and just 10 hours after SpaceX launched a Japanese lunar lander, the first sent in a purely commercial enterprise, from Cape Canaveral. .
“From Tranquility Base to Taurus-Littrow to the calm waters of the Pacific, the final chapter of NASA’s journey to the Moon is coming to an end. Orion, back to Earth,” said the NASA commentator Rob Navias at the time of the Orion splashdown, referring. at the Apollo 11 and 17 landing sites.
Nelson also reflected on Apollo, saying that President John F. Kennedy “surprised everybody with the Apollo generation and said we were going to achieve what we thought was impossible.”
“It’s a new day,” Nelson said. “A new day has come. And Generation Artemis is leading us there.”
The Orion capsule is towed to the flooded well deck of the USS Portland, an amphibious transport ship. Once inside, the deck will be sealed, the water will be pumped out, and the spacecraft will be left in a protective cradle for the return trip to Naval Base San Diego. NASA
A joint Navy-NASA recovery team was in sight of the Orion splashdown to inspect the burned capsule and, after a final round of tests, tow it back to the deck of the flooded well USS Portland, an amphibious ship on the dock.
After pumping out the seawater, Orion will settle into a protective cradle for the trip back to Naval Base San Diego and finally a trip home to the Kennedy Space Center.
Reentry and splashdown were the final primary objectives of the Artemis 1 test flight, giving engineers confidence that the 16.5-foot-wide Apollo-derived Avcoat heat shield and parachutes will perform as intended. they designed when four astronauts return from the Moon after the next Artemis. flight in 2024.
Testing the heat shield was, in fact, the top priority of the Artemis 1 mission, “and it’s our top priority for a reason,” mission manager Mike Sarafin said Friday.
“There is no arc jet or aerothermal facility here on Earth capable of replicating hypersonic reentry with a heat shield of this size,” he said. “And it’s a completely new heat shield design, and it’s safety-critical equipment. It’s designed to protect the spacecraft and (future astronauts) … so the heat shield has to work.”
And apparently it did, with no obvious signs of any major damage. Likewise, the three main parachutes deployed normally, as did the airbags needed to stabilize the capsule in light ocean waves.
A camera on one of the Orion capsule’s four solar wings captured spectacular images of Earth as the spacecraft closed for re-entry and splashdown on Sunday. That shot went down by one before the re-entry. NASA
A successful test flight was “what we needed to demonstrate this vehicle so we can fly with a crew,” said Deputy Administrator Bob Cabana, a former space shuttle commander. “And that’s the next step, and I can’t wait. … A few minor mistakes along the way, but (overall) it worked out perfectly.”
Launched on November 16 on the inaugural flight of NASA’s new Space Launch System large rocket, the unmanned Orion capsule was propelled out of Earth’s orbit and onto the Moon for an exhaustive series of tests, putting its propulsion, navigation, power and IT systems. their rhythms in the deep space environment.
Orion flew through the middle of a “distant retrograde orbit” around the Moon that took it farther from Earth (268,563 miles) than any previous human-classified spacecraft. Two critical firings of its main engine set up a low-altitude lunar flyby last Monday, which in turn put the craft on course for splashdown on Sunday.
NASA originally planned to land the craft west of San Diego, but a predicted cold front bringing stronger winds and rougher seas prompted mission managers to move the landing site about 350 miles south , to a point just south of Guadalupe Island about 200 miles west. from Baja California.
After a final trajectory correction maneuver early Sunday, the Orion spacecraft plunged back into the discernible atmosphere at an altitude of 400,000 feet at 12:20 p.m.
The re-entry profile was designed to ensure that Orion bounced once through the upper atmosphere like a flat stone skipping through still water before making its final descent. As expected, Orion descended from 400,000 feet to an altitude of about 200,000 feet in just two minutes, then climbed back up to about 295,000 feet before resuming its computer-guided fall back to Earth.
Within a minute and a half of entry, atmospheric friction began to generate temperatures across the heat shield that reached nearly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, half the temperature of the sun’s visible surface, enveloping the spacecraft in an electrically charged plasma that blocked communications with flight controllers for about five. minutes
The Orion spacecraft followed an unusual “jump entry” trajectory during its return to Earth, skipping from the top of the atmosphere discernible as a stone through calm waters before a second dip to splash. NASA
After another two-and-a-half-minute communications blackout during its second descent into the lower atmosphere, the spacecraft continued to decelerate as it closed in on the landing site, slowing to about 650 mph, about the speed of sound, about 15 minutes later. the entry began.
Finally, at an altitude of about 22,000 feet and a speed of just under 300 mph, small parachute parachutes deployed, removing a protective cover along with three pilot chutes. Finally, in a welcome sight to the nearby recovery crew, the capsule’s main parachutes deployed at an altitude of about 5,000 feet, slowing Orion to a lull of about 18 mph per splash.
The duration of the mission was 25 days 10 hours and 52 minutes.
“It was an amazing mission. We achieved all of our primary mission objectives,” said Michelle Zahner, Orion’s mission planning engineer. “The vehicle performed as well as we expected and even better in many ways.
“This is the farthest any human-qualified spacecraft has ever gone, and that required a lot of complex analysis and mission planning. To see it all come together and have such a successful test mission was incredible.”
Although flight controllers encountered still-unexplained glitches with their power system, initial “fun” with their star trackers, and degraded performance of a phased-array antenna, the spacecraft Orion and its service module built by the European Space Agency performed well overall, accomplishing pretty much everything. of its main objectives.
Throughout the Artremis 1 mission, cameras aboard the Orion capsule beamed back spectacular images of the Moon and Earth, giving flight controllers—and the public—a ringside seat during the 25-day test flight days NASA (both)
If all goes well, NASA plans to follow up the Artemis 1 mission by sending four astronauts around the Moon on the program’s second flight, Artemis 2, in 2024. The first Moon landing would occur in 2025-26 when the NASA says that the first woman and the next man will set foot on the lunar surface near the south pole.
While the 2024 flight appears achievable based on the results of the Artemis 1 mission, the Artemis 3 moon landing faces a much more challenging schedule, requiring strong performance during the Artemis 3 mission and development and successful lunar landing tests that NASA is paying SpaceX $2.9. billion to develop.
The lander, a variant of the company’s Starship rocket, has yet to fly into space. But it will take multiple robotic refueling flights in low Earth orbit before going to the Moon to await the rendezvous of astronauts launched aboard an Orion capsule.
SpaceX and NASA have provided few details about the development of the Starship lunar lander, and it is not yet known when it will be ready to safely carry astronauts to the Moon.
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