NASA's Artemis/Orion - Dec 3rd Update

(Reprinted from the Daytona News Journal)

NASA'S ORION TO MAKE LUNAR GRAVITY-ASSIST FLYBY TO HELP LAUNCH IT HOMEWARD

Readying to return 

Jamie Groh

Florida Today USA TODAY NETWORK – FLORIDA

NASA's Artemis I mission began the last leg of its deep-space journey Thursday when an Orion spacecraft departed lunar orbit, but the trip back to Earth isn't quite yet underway. It first has to swing by the moon again for a gravity assist maneuver early next week.

Thursday afternoon, the uncrewed spacecraft powered up its largest engine for a 105-second burn. The maneuver propelled Orion out of its distant retrograde orbit, or DRO, around the moon and committed it to a path back to Earth, skirting the lunar surface along the way.

“It's been a fantastic mission, but all great things must come to an end,” NASA spokesperson Dan Huot said during NASA's livestream of Thursday's burn.

Next, Orion will fire up its Orbital Maneuvering System engine once more on Monday for the powered return flyby, a burn similar to last week's powered outbound flyby.

The Orbital Maneuvering System engine is a repurposed piece of space shuttle hardware flying for the first time on Orion, having last flown during the STS-112 mission in October 2002. It joins over 30 other engines on Orion's powerhouse, a service module built by the European Space Agency.

Monday's powered flyby will again position Orion close to the surface at less than 80 miles like last week's maneuver that flung Orion into its distant retrograde lunar orbit. This time, however, it will harness the moon's gravity while aimed at Earth for its return trip home.

The return powered flyby will swingOrion past the Apollo 12 and 14 landing sites during daylight this time, but by the time Orion gets there, it will be positioned about 6,000 miles above the lunar surface. That's too far to capture any detailed photographs.

“We are absolutely going to be pointing cameras at that area. But these are essentially GoPro cameras and we're 6,000 miles away,” Zebulon Scoville, NASA flight director, told reporters on Wednesday.

“You can imagine being in Houston and pointing a GoPro in Paris and trying to see a Volkswagen bus there, you're not going to see it,” he said. “It'll be more of a tip of the hat and a historical nod to the past as we fly this spaceship to the future.”

All told, Orion has performed well so far and is expected to keep chugging along for the return leg of the Artemis I mission.

NASA's Chris Edelen, Orion vehicle integration deputy manager, told reporters Wednesday that “things have been very smooth with the spacecraft.”

“If this is a new car you purchase, you're going to be very happy,” he said. “It's drama-free so far and exceeding expectations.”

After coasting back toward Earth for about six days, Orion will ditch the service module before re-entering the atmosphere on Dec. 11. It will then descend under a parachute canopy for a 12:42 p.m. EST splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California, marking the end of Artemis I.

If all goes well, the splashdown will pave the way for NASA to execute a similar mission in the form of Artemis II. Though the mission profile looks similar to Artemis I, it will include astronauts. Then, Artemis III will aim to put two astronauts on the lunar surface before 2030.

The history of the universe and how it evolved is broadly accepted as the Big Bang model, which states that the universe began as an incredibly hot, dense point roughly 13.7 billion years ago. So, how did the universe go from being fractions of an inch (a few millimeters) across to what it is today?

See it on Amazon Prime - NOW

Many folks have not had the opportunity to ever see the Launch Control Center except for viewing of the firing rooms on TV during the Apollo and Shuttle launches.  Here's a short, one minute video on the recent remodel of the LCC lobby.

SpaceX plans to get even more ambitious with its pinpoint rocket landings.

Elon Musk's company routinely recovers and reuses the first stages of its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, bringing the boosters down for soft vertical landingsabout 9 minutes after liftoff on ground near the launch pad or on autonomous "drone ships" in the ocean. 

These touchdowns are impressively precise. But SpaceX aims to achieve something truly mind-blowing with Starship, the next-generation system the company is developing to take people and payloads to the moon, Mars and other distant destinations. 

With hundreds of thousands logging in all over the globe to watch, the 'much upgraded' Starship SN15 aced a test flight that had destroyed four prototypes before it.

On Wednesday, May 5, Starship serial number 15 (SN15) successfully completed SpaceX’s fifth high-altitude flight test of a Starship prototype from Starbase in Texas.

Similar to previous high-altitude flight tests of Starship, SN15 was powered through ascent by three Raptor engines, each shutting down in sequence prior to the vehicle reaching apogee – approximately 10 km in altitude. SN15 performed a propellant transition to the internal header tanks, which hold landing propellant, before reorienting itself for reentry and a controlled aerodynamic descent.

The Starship prototype descended under active aerodynamic control, accomplished by independent movement of two forward and two aft flaps on the vehicle. All four flaps were actuated by an onboard flight computer to control Starship’s attitude during flight and enabled precise landing at the intended location. SN15’s Raptor engines reignited as the vehicle performed the landing flip maneuver immediately before touching down for a nominal landing on the pad.

While a small fire (probably methane-fed) was evident for several minutes after the landing, it was eventually extinguished without visible damage.

SpaceX notes that, "These test flights of Starship are all about improving our understanding and development of a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo on long-duration interplanetary flights, and help humanity return to the Moon, and travel to Mars and beyond."