Artemis I launched on November 16, with the powerful Space Launch System rocket carrying Orion lifting off from Launch Pad 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1:47 a.m. EST. Later that day Orion sent back a picture of Earth as the spacecraft made its journey away from our planet. On the
that measure the positions of stars to help the spacecraft determine its orientation. The star trackers continue to provide excellent data to develop our required navigation solutions.
Engineers will characterize the alignment between the star trackers that are part of the guidance, navigation and control system and the Orion inertial measurements units, by exposing different areas of the spacecraft to the Sun and activating the star trackers in different thermal states to determine if the temperature differences induce any changes.
Artemis All Access is your look at the latest in Artemis I, the people and technology behind the mission, and what is coming up next. This uncrewed flight test around the Moon will pave the way for a crewed flight test and future human lunar exploration as part of Artemis. Credit: NASA A new flight test objective was added to flight day 14 to collect additional information on the thermal characterization of Orion. During a majority of the mission Orion is typically in a tail-to-sun attitude, meaning that the solar arrays face toward the sun to generate power. This flight test objective purposefully orients Orion outside of a perfect tail-to-sun attitude by up to 20 degrees in order to evaluate the spacecraft and gather additional data.
Just after 4 p.m. CST, Orion was over 264,000 miles from Earth and nearly 46,000 miles from the Moon, cruising at 1,790 mph .
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