NASA’s Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft will arrive in lunar orbit on Friday afternoon (November 25), and you can watch the crucial moment live.
Orion It has been making its circuitous path to Earth’s nearest neighbor ever since Launching last Wednesday (November 16) in NASA Artemis 1 The mission – and the unmanned capsule is about to reach its destination.
At 4:52 p.m. EDT (21:52 GMT) on Friday, Orion will perform an engine burn that will put the spacecraft into a deep retrograde orbit (DRO) around the moon. You can catch all the action live here on Space.com, courtesy of NASA, starting at 4:30 p.m. EDT (21:30 GMT).
Related: NASA’s Artemis 1 lunar mission: live updates
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DRO Orion will take about 40,000 miles (64,000 kilometers) behind the moon at its farthest point. On this trajectory, the capsule will set a new record, moving farther from Earth than any other human-classified spacecraft.
NASA maintains the current mark of 248,655 miles (400,171 km). Apollo 13 The mission you weren’t supposed to travel this far. Apollo 13 orbited the Moon instead of landing on the object after the spacecraft’s Deep Space Service Module oxygen tank failed.
Orion will spend just under a week at DRO. The capsule will leave lunar orbit with the engine burning on December 1st, and then begin its return to Earth. Orion will arrive here on December 11 with a dip in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California, if all goes according to plan.
The approximately 26-day Artemis 1 mission is designed to take control of Orion and the massive Space launch system The rocket, which sent the capsule into the sky last week, is ahead of planned manned flights to the Moon.
These astronauts’ first flights, Artemis 2It will send Orion around the moon in 2024. Artemis 3 Boots will then land near the moon’s south pole in 2025 or 2026. More landing missions will follow, as NASA builds a manned research site in the south polar region — a major goal for it. Artemis program.
Mike Wall is the author of “the least (Opens in a new tab)(Major Major Publishers, 2018; illustrated by Carl Tate), a book about the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @employee (Opens in a new tab). Follow us on Twitter @employee (Opens in a new tab) where FB (Opens in a new tab).
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