The spacecraft successfully completed the distant retrograde orbit departure boost on Thursday, December 1 at 21:53 p.m. GMT, firing its main engine for 1 minute and 45 seconds to put the spacecraft into a close lunar flyby before of your return home
The maneuver changed Orion’s speed by approximately 138 meters per second and was performed using Orion’s main engine in the European Service Module. It is an orbital maneuvering system engine modified for use on Orion and built by Aerojet Rocketdyne. The engine has the capacity to provide 6,000 pounds of thrust. The engine that travels on Artemis I was used on 19 Space Shuttle flights, beginning with the STS-41G mission in October 1984 and ending with the STS-112 mission in October 2002.
The ignition of the engine is one of two maneuvers required before the splashdown of Orion in the Pacific Ocean, which will take place on December 11. The second will occur on Monday, December 5, when the spacecraft flies 127 kilometers above the lunar surface to propel itself on its return trajectory, which will carry Orion on its way to Earth.
The teams also continued thermal testing of the star trackers during their eighth and final planned test.. Star trackers are a navigation tool that measure the positions of the stars to help the spacecraft determine its orientation. In the mission’s first three days of flight, engineers evaluated initial data to understand star tracker readings correlated with thruster firings.
Just after 22:30 GMT on December 1, Orion was traveling 382,000 kilometers from Earth and 85,000 kilometers from the Moon, cruising at 3,700 kilometers per hour.
December 2, 2022
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