Thursday, March 28

The Artemis I mission spacecraft reaches the Moon

NASA has confirmed that the Orion spacecraft, after being disconnected for a few minutes due to its position behind the Moon, has resumed the signal with its Deep Space Network at 1:59 p.m. (Spanish peninsular time), after successfully carrying out a 1:44 p.m. the engine of the orbital maneuvering system was turned on to accelerate the spacecraft to a speed of more than 933 km/h.

At power-up, Orion was 527 km above the Moon, traveling at over 8,000 km/h. Soon after, it passed 130 km above the Moon, traveling at 8,210 km/h. At the time of the lunar flyby, the spacecraft was more than 370,149 km from Earth.

This departure flight is the first of the two maneuvers necessary to enter the distant retrograde orbit around our satellite. The Artemis mission ship, which took off on november 16will perform the insertion burn in this orbit on Friday 25 November, using the European Service Module provided by ESA.

Orion will remain in that orbit for about a week to test the spacecraft’s systems. The distant retrograde orbit will carry Orion 64373 km past the Moon before returning to Earth. The greatest distance of Orion with respect to Earth will occur on Monday, November 28, at more than 432,108 km, and with respect to our satellite, on Friday, November 25, at more than 92,134 km.

The Deep Space Network, managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in southern California, handles Artemis I’s communications beyond low-Earth orbit.

This includes mission trajectory corrections, powered approach flights and distant retrograde orbit insertion and departure, while the Near Space Network provides supplementary navigation data with the help of its constellation of tracking satellites. and data transmission.

NASA Deep Space Network

The Deep Space Network consists of three bases equidistant from each other (with a difference of approximately 120 degrees in longitude) around the world. These facilities are located in Goldstone (near Barstow, California, in the US), in Robledo de Chavela (near Madrid, in Spain) and in Canberra (Australia).

The strategic location of these sites allows for constant communication with spacecraft as our planet rotates. Before a distant spacecraft plunges below the horizon at one location, another can pick up the signal and continue to communicate.

Orion initially recovered the signal with the Madrid ground station after the lunar flyby and then it went to the Goldstone station in California.





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