The US Orion spacecraft splashed into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California and completed its autonomous (unmanned) mission to the Moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program. This was reported by the space agency.
At 9.40 pm Pacific time (20:40 Moscow time), 40 minutes before that, the capsule with two dummies left the service compartment and landed on the water with three parachutes. According to NASA’s broadcast host, Orion’s return to Earth was “perfect”.
The service part of the ship was completely burned in the atmosphere. When the capsule jumped to the ground, it was first slowed down to 520 km / h by the Earth’s atmosphere, and only then the parachutes slowed it down to about 30 km / h. Now NASA engineers are conducting final tests in the water, after which Orion will be de-energized and loaded onto the USS Portland landing craft.
US Navy divers and other crew members will approach the spacecraft in several inflatable boats. When Orion is ready, the crane will pull him to a specially designed sled inside the ship’s shaft.
The spacecraft will then be taken to the US Naval Base in San Diego and soon returned to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for examination. Technicians in Florida will carefully examine Orion and extract the data recorded on board.
The first phase of flight of the Artemis lunar mission took less than 26 days – a heavy SLS rocket with the Orion spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral on 16 November, the first launch to Earth in 50 years. satellite of a ship capable of carrying people on board.
As NASA reports, this flight has become a comprehensive test of all key elements of the Artemis mission – the SLS rocket, Orion itself, and auxiliary ground systems. The launch was delayed three times – in August technical problems were detected, and in September the ship could not be launched due to a tropical storm.
With the Artemis program approved in 2017, the Orion manned spacecraft itself was developed in the early 2000s for the previous US lunar mission Constellation. Japan, Canada and the European Space Agency are also joining Artemis. Orion made three orbits around the Moon in 25 days, first approaching the Moon from a minimum distance of 100 km and then entering a 70,000 km retrograde orbit.
On board were two dummies to assess the effect of interplanetary radiation on the human body, yeast, molds, algae and plant seeds.
According to the plans, the second phase of the program, Artemis-2, will begin in May 2024. Then the United States plans to launch a manned spacecraft with two astronauts to the Moon. They will need to make a circle around the Earth satellite and return 42 days after launch. But the third phase of the mission involves landing on the lunar surface in the south pole region, which will take about six days.
In total, the Artemis program is designed for eight phases, the last of which is scheduled for 2028. In addition to flights of astronauts to the Moon, landing on the surface of a satellite (including land vehicle), the delivery of modules of the Lunar Gateway station into lunar orbit is planned. This platform should take astronauts on board who will be doing up to two months of lunar exploration at least once a year for several decades.