Orion Gets Glorious Views of Moon As Apollo 17 Anniversary Nears

NASA’s uncrewed Orion spacecraft successfully fired its main engine today for the second of two burns to depart lunar orbit and come back home. In the process, it took ever more glorious views of the Moon to add to its growing catalogue of stunning images that stir memories of the Apollo program. This week marks the 50th anniversary of the launch of the last Apollo mission to the Moon, Apollo 17, and Orion offers hope that humans will soon return.

Orion is part of the Artemis I test flight. Artemis is NASA’s program to return astronauts to the Moon with international and commercial partners for long-term sustainable exploration and utilization. NASA named the program Artemis because she is Apollo’s twin sister in Greek mythology and this time women as well as men will make the journey.

The November 16 launch of the Space Launch System rocket that sent Orion on its way and the upcoming splashdown in the Pacific on Sunday are engineering milestones and many important systems tests are being accomplished in between, but the mission may end up best remembered in the public mind for the images it’s sending back.

The Apollo program set the standard with the Earthrise and Blue Marble photos at the bookends of the lunar Apollo program — Apollo 8 and Apollo 17 — but Artemis is already showing what it can do.

The 26-day mission is going very well. Artemis I Mission Manager Mike Sarafin called the performance of the Space Launch System rocket on November 16 “eye watering” and at a briefing today, flight day 20, Orion’s Deputy Program Manager Debbie Korth said NASA “couldn’t be more pleased” with Orion.

Orion’s Orbital Maneuvering System, the Aerojet Rocketdyne-built main engine that flew on 19 space shuttle flights before this one, came through once more with a 3 minute 27 second firing — the Return Powered Flyby — that took the spacecraft out of lunar orbit and put it on the path to Earth.

The OMS engine is one of several on the European Space Agency-provided Service Module. Smaller Reaction Control System engines and auxiliary engines are used for fine-tuning.

While the mission is proceeding smoothly overall, one mystery NASA is trying to solve involves “latching current limiters” that are like circuit breakers on the connection between the solar arrays and the spacecraft. Throughout the mission some of them have been tripping themselves off. Sarafin said there is no record on the on-board controller of any commands being sent.

“There’s a separate controller that tells the current limiter to open or close. And there’s no record of the command device saying you should open or you should close. This thing is just opening and closing without the box, the command device, telling it to do so. So there’s some anomalous behavior that we’re trying to understand.”

No mission impacts have resulted so far, but NASA wants to understand what’s going on.

Otherwise, everything is fine and Orion is on track to reenter Earth’s atmosphere and splash down in the Pacific Ocean near San Diego on Sunday at 12:40 pm ET.

The next decision gate is Thursday when they will decide on the exact landing spot. While the spacecraft’s trajectory back to Earth was set today, NASA is using a new “skip entry” maneuver when it comes through the atmosphere that offers a bit of flexibility on the precise landing location to adjust for weather or other considerations.

NASA will have another briefing on Thursday after that decision is made.

If all goes well with the rest of the mission, NASA hopes to launch Artemis II, the first flight with a crew, in 2024. They will go around the Moon, not land. The next crew to land on the Moon will be on Artemis III. NASA hopes that will fly at the end of 2025.

That will be 53 years after Apollo 17 departed and Commander Gene Cernan said as he climbed back into the lunar landing module: “We left as we came, and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.”