NASA’s Orion spacecraft, an American spacecraft launched in mid-November, has successfully landed in the Pacific Ocean.
The unmanned Orion capsule was en route for 26 days. It first set a course for the moon, then circled it and returned to our planet. (Initially, the mission was expected to last about 42 days, as the infographic below indicates.) At its farthest point, Orion was 270,000 miles from Earth.
Upon reentry, Orion entered the Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of 40,000 kilometers per hour. About five miles above the surface of the water, Orion’s 11 parachutes deployed, and at the time it was still falling at about 310 miles per hour. Finally, the capsule splashed safely into the water at 30 kilometers per hour in the place intended by NASA employees. In future crewed missions, NASA will have astronauts picked up by Navy ships after they land.
General repetition
This was the first mission of the American-led international Artemis program. It wants to return people to the moon in 2025 at the earliest and eventually develop a form of permanent presence there.
During this mission, the Orion capsule was extensively tested, from launch to return, completely unmanned, although some mannequins in astronaut suits and, above all, many measuring sensors traveled with it. With the second Artemis mission in 2024, a manned trip to the moon is planned (but without landing there). It will therefore take at least one more year to land on the moon for the Artemis 3 mission.
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