Orion snaps 'selfie' with the Moon as it prepares for distant retrograde orbit
Nine days into its flight to the Moon and beyond, NASA's uncrewed Orion capsule is due to fire its engines for an insertion burn that will place the craft into a distant retrograde orbit about 50,000km from the lunar surface.
DRO provides a highly stable orbit requiring little fuel, allowing NASA to fully test Orion's systems in a deep space environment far from Earth for an extended amount time. The orbit is so large that it will take Orion six days to complete half of a revolution, at which point the spacecraft will exit orbit for the journey back home.
The Orion capsules are designed to be partially reusable. While this iteration is likely headed for a museum if it returns in one piece, NASA hopes to salvage the avionics systems for Artemis II, due to launch in 2024. Otherwise the team will be able to gather a lot of data on what can actually be reused once the test flight is complete.
Artemis I mission manager Mike Sarafin has previously described Orion's debut flight as a"true stress test." He said:"Without crew aboard the first mission, DRO allows Orion to spend more time in deep space for a rigorous mission to ensure spacecraft systems, like guidance, navigation, communication, power, thermal control and others are ready to keep astronauts safe on future crewed missions.
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