{"id":11158,"date":"2022-11-28T23:35:28","date_gmt":"2022-11-28T15:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/orion-sails-through-halfway-point-of-artemis-1-moon-mission\/"},"modified":"2022-11-28T23:35:28","modified_gmt":"2022-11-28T15:35:28","slug":"orion-sails-through-halfway-point-of-artemis-1-moon-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/orion-sails-through-halfway-point-of-artemis-1-moon-mission\/","title":{"rendered":"Orion sails through halfway point of Artemis 1 moon mission"},"content":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION<\/p>\n

\"\"
A camera on one of the Orion spacecraft\u2019s solar array wings captured this view of the crew module Monday, Nov. 28, with the Earth and the moon in the background. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At the halfway point in NASA\u2019s Artemis 1 mission, the unpiloted Orion moonship is chalking up a near-flawless flight, mission managers said Monday, beaming back spectacular images of Earth disappearing from view as it was eclipsed by the moon.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe spacecraft is operating just tremendously well so far, and we\u2019re really happy with its performance overall across all the subsystem areas,\u201d said Howard Hu, NASA\u2019s Orion program manager at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.<\/p>\n

Only a handful of minor technical issues have cropped up since launch November 16, including now-understood \u201cfunnies\u201d with the capsule\u2019s star tracker navigation system, erratic coolant flow in one thermal control system loop due to a gas bubble and a radiation-induced flight computer reset.<\/p>\n

The computer automatically rebooted itself as programmed and is working normally. Mission Manager Mike Sarafin called the glitch \u201ca gift handed to us from the flight environment,\u201d because it confirmed the system\u2019s ability to recover from a radiation hit \u201cas it was designed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Only one \u201canomaly team\u201d is still on the job as engineers troubleshoot a minor glitch with a power distribution system component. But Sarafin said the issue is not a serious problem \u201cbecause we have appropriate levels of redundancy. \u2026 We just don\u2019t quite understand what the hardware is telling us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Monday afternoon, the Orion capsule reached a point in its \u201cdistant retrograde orbit\u201d around the moon some 268,562 miles from Earth \u2014 nearly 43,000 miles above the lunar surface \u2014 setting a new distance record for a human-rated spacecraft. The previous record of 248,654 miles, set by the Apollo 13 crew in 1970, was surpassed Saturday.<\/p>\n

A few hours earlier Monday, a camera mounted on one of Orion\u2019s solar arrays captured a view of the blue-and-white Earth slowly passing behind the moon in a deep space eclipse, disappearing from view in a stunning celestial display.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was in the control center for a majority of those images, the ones including the Earth and the moon, and it\u2019s really hard to articulate what the feeling is,\u201d said Flight Director Rick LaBrode. \u201cIt\u2019s just amazing to be here and see that.\u201d<\/p>\n

If all goes well, Orion will break out of the distant retrograde orbit with a rocket firing Thursday, setting up a close lunar flyby next Monday. That maneuver, in turn, will fling the spacecraft back toward Earth for a high-speed re-entry and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean west of San Diego on December 11.<\/p>\n

NASA plans to follow the Artemis 1 mission by launching four yet-to-be-named astronauts on a shakedown flight around Earth and moon in late 2024, setting the stage for two astronauts to land near the lunar south pole in the 2025-26 timeframe.<\/p>\n

Sarafin said NASA would revisit target dates and possible crew assignments for the Artemis 2 mission after the Artemis 1 test flight is complete. In the meantime, Hu said, \u201cour performance across the board continues to be outstanding.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe continue to \u2026 generate 20 percent more power than we really need, we still have a tremendous amount of propulsive capability,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are looking at other performance measurements across the spacecraft, and those are all going very well. So really happy where we are halfway through the mission.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION A camera on one of the Orion spacecraft\u2019s solar array wings captured this view of the crew module Monday, Nov. 28, with the Earth and the moon in the background. Credit: NASA At the halfway point in NASA\u2019s Artemis 1 mission, the unpiloted Orion moonship is chalking up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11158"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}