Upon its return home, the Orion module made its second approach to the Moon

“Orion is coming home! The team has achieved another significant success,” NASA director Bill Nelson said of the maneuver. “When Orion re-enters Earth’s atmosphere in a few days, it will return hotter and faster than ever before. astronauts on board,” he added.

“After two powered maneuvers on December 4 and 5, the Orion spacecraft flew past the Moon at a distance of only 129.7 km and headed towards the Earth. Landing is scheduled for Sunday December 11 at 19:06 CET “, space specialist Michal Václavík from the Czech Space Agency and the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague summarized on his Twitter.

According to the AP agency, the landing will take place in the Pacific Ocean near San Diego, in the United States. Orion will now make only minor course corrections until it lands on Sunday. Its descent will be slowed by a series of parachutes and it will be picked up from the surface by a US Navy vessel.

Orion is currently on its 21st mission day and, according to the latest data from NASA on Wednesday, was more than 385,000 kilometers from Earth, less than 170,000 km from the lunar surface and traveling at a speed of about 1,030 km/h. The module will cover 2.2 million kilometers in less than 26 mission days.

The Artemis mission was launched on November 16, when the module was launched from Florida by a Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. Orion has been in distant orbit around the moon since Friday, November 25.

Before getting there, the craft performed a maneuver during which it skidded close to the lunar surface – even then the craft flew over to the far side of our natural satellite and came within about 130km of its surface (similar to this week).

On December 1, Orion then performed a 105-second powered maneuver to leave distant lunar orbit.

“On December 1, Orion fired its main engine to leave a distant retrograde orbit and head toward Earth,” NASA officials announced in early December.

On board the three-metre-high Orion, which can be inhabited by up to four astronauts on future missions, there are now only mannequins instead of a crew. The Artemis I mission is to test everything from the rocket and module to the operation of the control center on Earth to the effects on the future crew. NASA is trying to overload the module’s systems.

Orion’s return will be the most critical part of the test mission. According to CNN, the module will enter the upper layers of the Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of about 40,000 kilometers per hour. The protective shield will have to withstand a temperature of almost 2800 degrees Celsius. The atmosphere will slow Orion to 300 mph (482 km/h) and the parachute system to a maximum of 20 mph (32 km/h) before crashing into the Pacific.

Just 30 minutes before touchdown, Europe’s ESM service module will separate from Orion and “not survive” the return, but burn up in Earth’s atmosphere, according to the European Space Agency (ESA). The Orion spacecraft’s main engine, which performs basic motor maneuvers, is located on the ESM add-on module.

If all goes according to plan, a manned craft could fly around the moon in 2024 on the Artemis II mission, while NASA plans to land two humans on the lunar surface by the end of 2025 on the Artemis III mission.