Artemis Moon returns to Earth with a picture perfect Pacific Ocean splashdown

NASA’s Artemis I moonship It returned home to Earth, slaloming through the air at more than 24,000 mph and enduring a 5,000-degree re-entry into Hell before making a picture-perfect splashdown in the Pacific Ocean to close out a 25-day, 1.4-million-mile test flight and back to the moon.

Descending under three large parachutes, the unmanned 9-ton Orion water capsule descended 200 miles west of Baja California at 12:40 pm EST, 20 minutes after the first trace of the atmosphere was visible 76 miles up.

“I’m overwhelmed. It’s been an extraordinary day,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said. “It’s historic because now we’re going back into deep space with a new generation.”

In a timely if unexpected way, the slashdown comes 50 years to the day after the last Apollo 17 moon landing in 1972 and just 10 hours after SpaceX launched A Japanese moon lander, the first launched on a purely commercial venture, from Cape Canaveral.

“From Tranquility Base to Taurus-Littrow to the calm waters of the Pacific, the last chapter of NASA’s journey to the moon is approaching. Orion is coming back to Earth,” said NASA commentator Rob Navias, referring to the moment of Orion’s launch. after landing on Apollo 11 and 17

Nelson also reflected on Apollo, saying that President John F. Kennedy “struck a generation with Apollo and told us we were going to achieve what we thought was impossible.”

“It’s a new day,” Nelson said. “A new day has dawned. And the generation of Artemis leads us there.”

A joint Navy-NASA recovery team stood in front of Orion’s splashdown to inspect the charred capsule and, after a final round of tests, tow it in a flood well aboard the Portland, an amphibious naval ship.

After being released from the seawater, Orion will sit on a protective cruise cradle at Naval Base San Diego and eventually travel home to the Kennedy Space Center.

Re-entry and the final splashdown proved to be major objectives of the Artemis 1 flight, giving space engineers confidence that the 16.5-foot-wide Apollo-Avcoat heat shield and parachutes will work as designed when the four astronauts return from the moon next to Diana. flight 2024

Testing the heat shield was, in fact, the top priority of the Artemis 1 mission “and it’s our priority one objective,” mission manager Mike Sarafin said Friday.

“No arc jet or aerothermal capability here on Earth can replicate hypersonic reentry with a heat shield of this size.” “And it’s a well-known heat shield design, and it’s a critical piece of safety equipment. It’s designed to protect space and (future astronauts) … so the heat shield has to work.”

And it seems that it is just, with no obvious signs of any major damage. All three main parachutes deployed regularly as airbags were needed to stabilize the capsule in the ocean.

The successful test flight was “what we need to test this vehicle so we can fly it with a crew,” said Deputy Administrator Bob Cabana, senior shuttle commander. “And it’s the next step, and I can’t wait. … A few minor glitches along the way, but he did it perfectly.”

conducted 16. Nov on the maiden flight of NASA’s massive new Space Launch System rocket, the unmanned Orion capsule was launched from Earth orbit and headed to the moon for a series of tests, including propulsion, navigation, power and computer systems throughout its journey into deep space.

Orion flew through half a “retrograde distance orbit” around the moon that took it farther from Earth — 268,563 miles — than any previously estimated human spaceflight. Two critical thrusters of its main engine set up a low-altitude flyby near the Moon, which in turn put the craft on course for a splashdown on the Sun.

NASA originally planned to launch the ship west of San Diego, but before predicted cold higher winds and rougher seas sent managers to move the port site about 350 miles south, to the southern point of Guadalupe Island some 200 miles south. of Baja California.

After a final trajectory correction run early Sunday morning, the Orion spacecraft plunged into the visible atmosphere at a height of 400,000 feet at 12:20 p.m.

The re-entry profile was designed so that Orion would once pass through the top of the atmosphere like a plane rock skipping over calm water before making its descent. Orion, as expected, descended from 400,000 feet to an altitude of about 200,000 feet in just two minutes, then climbed to about 295,000 feet before turning on its computer as it was brought down to Earth.

Within a minute and a half of entry, the atmospheric temperature began to generate heat through the shield of nearly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit — half the temperature of the visible surface of the sun — enveloping the spacecraft in an electrically charged plasma that cut off communications with the flight controller for about five. minutes

After another two-and-a-half minutes of black contact with the second drop into the lower atmosphere, the spacecraft slowed down as it closed in ascent, slowing to about 650 mph, roughly the speed of sound, about 15 minutes later. entrance gate

Finally, at an altitude of about 22,000 feet and a speed of under 300 mph, small parachutes deploy, pulling a protective cover with three pilot chutes. Finally, in a welcome sight to the nearby rescue crew, the main parachute pods deployed at an altitude of about 5,000 feet, slowing the Orion to a stop at 18 mph or so.

The duration of the mission was 25 days 10 hours 52 minutes.

“It was an incredible mission. We achieved all of our major mission goals,” said Michelle Zahner, Orion’s mission planning engineer. “The vehicle performed every bit as we hoped and better in many ways.”

“This is the last evaluation of any human-space flight, and it required a lot of complex analysis and mission planning. I was happy to see everyone come together and experience such an amazing mission.”

While the flight controllers are still running unknown glitches with their power system, the initial “funnies” with their stars and performing phased operations from the antenna array, the Orion spacecraft and its Agency-built European space service module have worked well overall, almost all achieving. their major goals.

If all goes well, NASA plans to follow up the Artemis 1 mission by sending four astronauts around the moon on the program’s second flight — Artemis 2 — in 2024. The first moon landing will follow in the 2025-26 timeframe, NASA says. A woman and the next man will set foot on the lunar surface near the south pole.

While the 2024 flight appears to follow on from the results of the Artemis 1 mission, the Artemis 3 moon landing is on a much more difficult schedule, requiring good work on the Artemis 3 mission and successful progress and testing of the lunar landing by NASA Space $2.9 600 million to develop.

The Deventer, a variant of the company’s Starship rocket, has not yet flown into space. But it will require multiple robotic reentry flights into low-Earth orbit before heading to the moon, carried by astronauts in the Orion capsule on board.

SpaceX and NASA have provided few details about the development of the Starcraft moon lander and it is not yet known when astronauts will be ready to be safely transported to the moon.