After leaving its “distant retrograde lunar orbit” and on its way back to Earth, the Orion spacecraft, from the Artemis I mission, re-entered the lunar sphere of influence, making the Moon the main gravitational force acting on it, reported NASA.
Orion began its nineteenth day of flight this Sunday on an unmanned mission of 28 days to explore the Moon through the Artemis program and then send astronauts.
The capsule, which has three mannequins on board and is sending photographs and videos in real time to Earth, is preparing for a final flyby of the Moon this Monday and then returns.
On Monday, Orion will fly over the Moon at a distance of 79 miles (200 km), in what will be his last approach maneuver to head towards a ditch aje off the coast of southern California next of December.
The entrance to the lunar sphere occurred on Saturday afternoon when the spacecraft was about 28,993 miles (64.522 km) from the surface of the Moon and 270,630 miles (434.550km) from Earth, detailed the mission’s blog.
Yesterday Orion was approximately 4 and a half hours without communication with NASA’s Deep Space Network while “the ground stations were reconfigured”, but some automated commands guided the spacecraft during that time, reported the US agency.
The ship will leave the sphere of lunar influence for the last time next Tuesday, added NASA.
The p Roasted Monday 28 of November, Orion reached the maximum distance achieved by any ship from Earth: 356,522 kilometres (270,000 miles ), thus exceeding the record distance of Apollo 13.
The capsule, which was traveling at 5,98 mph (8,79 km/hour) , thus breaking the record for the farthest distance traveled from Earth by any spacecraft designed to be manned by humans, according to NASA.
The general objective of the Artemis program is to establish a base on the Moon as a previous step to reach Mars in the future.
To this end, after Artemis I, NASA will launch in 2022 Artemis II into lunar orbit, with crew, and be esp it was for
the takeoff of Artemis III, a mission in which the astronauts, including a woman, would touch the ground of the satellite.
NASA had to delay the departure of the mission four times, twice for technical reasons and another two for meteorological reasons.
Finally, the past 28 November, The SLS, the largest and most powerful of all NASA rockets, taller than a building of plants (322 feet or 64 meters), took off from Florida propelling Orion.