Follow the maneuver of NASA’s Orion spacecraft to orbit the moon

Today marks the day the uncrewed Orion capsule reaches its final destination, a distant retrograde orbit around the Moon. But, for that to happen, the spacecraft must successfully implement a course-correction boost, which you can watch live here.

NASA coverage begins at 4:30 PM ET, with a course correction scheduled for 4:52 PM ET. You can follow them NASA TVAnd the YouTube Or in the livestream below.

The distant retrograde orbit (DRO) is called “far” because Orion will travel about 40,000 miles past the Moon before returning. It’s a giant orbit. So gigantic, in fact, that “it would take the spacecraft six days to complete half a revolution around the moon before exiting orbit for the journey back to Earth,” to me NASA. The “retro” side of the orbit means that the capsule will orbit our natural satellite in the opposite direction to the direction in which the moon travels around Earth.

Orion He will break the Apollo 13 distance record on Saturday When you are 480,494 km from home. No manned vehicle has traveled this far.

Orion completed its sixth and final launch to correct the course of its departure yesterday. capsule that The listing process has begun in the DRO On Monday, November 21, it is currently moving at 4,200 km/h. NASA Contact with Orion is briefly and unexpectedly lost on Wednesday, but the capsule behaved as expected.

Today is the tenth of Artemis mission 1 25.5 days, which started with A stunning opening launch NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on Wednesday, Nov. 16. Artemis 1 aims to show both the SLS and Orion, which still need to survive in the atmosphere, at which point it will crash into our atmosphere at speeds of up to Mach 32 (39.199 km/h). During the re-entry attempt, Orion’s heat shield will encounter temperatures in excess of 2,760 degrees Celsius.

But before that can happen, Orion must achieve orbital insertion today and then perform an exit maneuver on December 1st to escape the lunar gravitational grip. The very act of leaving Orion’s distant retrograde orbit would require another flyby of the lunar surface. Orion is expected to land in the Pacific Ocean on December 11th.

Artemis 1 is the first that NASA hopes will be A series of increasingly complex missions in the lunar environment. The space agency aims to repeat the current mission, but with astronauts on board, in 2024, and to land humans on the Moon later this decade.